Memorial Address 



ROSCOE CONKLING 



Robert G. Ingersoll; 



Sketch of Ins Life, with Triljutes of Public Men 
and Opinions of the Press. 



" He did not fall 
Like drooping flowers that no man noticeth, 
But like a great branch of some stately tree, 
Rent in a tempest and flung down to death, 
Thick with green leafage." * * * * 



ALBANY: 
JAMES B. LYON, PUBLISHER. 

1888. 



CONTENTS 



Pagb. 

Proceedings of the Legislature, . . . . . 5-14 

Memorial Address of Robert G. Ingersoll, ... 17-29 

Biographical Sketch, --..... 33-37 

Memorial Tributes : 

Opinions of the Cabinet, ...... 41-42 

Opinions of Public Men, ------ 42-44 

Opinions of the Press, ...... 44-93 

A Specimen of Conkling's Eloquence, ... - 94 

Reminiscences by P'ter O'Dactyl, . . . - . 94-95 



PROCEEDINGS 



Ll-CISLATURl' OF Till-: STATE OF NEW YORK, 



IN RELATION TO THE DEATH OF 



^^'ji>cn;\tciv ^^cjscoc (rcinUliu!.v 



IN ASSEMBLY: 

April 18, 1888. 

Mr. HusTED, addressing the Chair, spoke as follows : 

Mr. Speaker." — At fifty minutes after one this morning- ROSCOE 
CONKLING passed away. When I make that statement I think 
this House will imanimously concur with me that we have a 
right to deviate from the usual course whereb}'^ we offer resolu- 
tions five minutes before the hour of adjournment. 

I think this House will concur with me that a man so distin- 
guished as he has been, that a man who has served this State so 
many years so faithfully and so well, who won for himself the first 
rank among American orators, American publicists and American 
statesmen, deserves especial consideration from the members of 
the Legislature of the State of New York. 

It is, sir, but nine years ago since, in this room, I nomi- 
nated him for Senator of the United States. I did it then with 



fi Proceedings of the Legislature 

pleasure and with pride. With grief and sorrow I now announce 
his death, and I beg leave, sir, to submit the following resolu- 
tions, which I will read myself: 

Resolved, That the Assembly learns with deep sorrow of the 
death of Hon. Roscoe Conkling. 

Resolved, That his distinguished public services, his high stand- 
ard of public honor, and his official and personal integrity, merit 
the acknowledgment of the people of this State. 

Resolved, That as Representative and Senator in Congress he 
won the admiration of his colleagues and the plaudits of the 
nation. 

Resolved (if the Senate concur), That a joint committee, con- 
sisting of five Senators and nine Members of the Assembly, 
be appointed by the presiding officers of the respective Houses, 
to prepare a suitable memorial of the public services of the 
deceased orator and statesman, and to report to the Legislature 
what further action shall be taken in order to paj- to his memory 
the respectful tribute of their sorrow. 

Resolved, That oiit of respect to his memory this House do now 
adjourn. 

The resolutions, by a rising; vote, were unanimously 
adopted. 



IN SENATE: 

Apkil 18, 1888. 

Senator Coggeshall offered the following : 

Resolved, That tlie Senate of the State of New York learns 
with deep sorrow and profound regret of the death of the Hon. 
RoscoE CoNKLiNO. His long and distinguished services in Congress 



OF THE State of New Yoek. 7 

as a Representative and Senator from the State of New York, his 
great intellectual attainments and brilliant record, his honesty of 
public career and integrity, his loyalty of friendship and nobility 
of character, his illustrious and successful achievements, make his 
name and fame the common heritage of our State and nation, 
and enshrine him in the hearts of the peoj^le. 

Resolved (if the Assembly concur), That a committee of live 
Senators and nine Members of the Assembly be aj^pointed by 
the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the Assembly to 
attend the funeral of Mr. Conkling, and to make arrangements 
for appropriate memorial services by the Legislature. 

Senators Coggeshall, Low and Cantok spoke to the 
resolutions, and they were unanimously adopted by a 
rising vote. 

The Assembly sent for concurrence the following 
resolutions : 

Resolved, That the Assembly learns with deep sorrow of the 
death of Hon. Roscoe Conkling. 

Resolved, That his distinguished public services, his high stand- 
ard of public honor, and his official and personal integrity, merit 
the acknowledgment of the people of this State. 

Resolved, That as a Republican Senator in Congress he has 
won the admiration of his colleagues and the plaudits of the 
nation. 

Resolved (if the Senate concur), That a joint committee, con- 
sisting of five Senators and nine Members of the Assembly, 
be appointed by the joresidiug officers of the respective Houses 
to prepare a suitable memorial to the public services of the 
deceased orator and statesman, and to report to the Legislature 
what further action shall be taken in order to pay to his memory 
the respectful tribute of their sorrow ; also, 



8 Proceedings of the Legislature 

Resolved (if the Senate concur), That a joint committee of nine 
IMembers of the Assembly and six Senators be appointed to 
attend the funeral of Eoscoe Conkling. 

The Pkesident.— The subject-matter of the resohitions 
sent by the Assembly has been already adopted by 
resolutions just introduced and passed in the Senate, 
and no action is necessary upon the resolutions of the 
Assembly. 

Senator Coggeshall said: 

Mr. Pkesident. — It is not my purpose to pronounce any 
extended eulogy upon the character, life and services of the 
distinguished man whose death we so profoundly regret. No 
eulogies, no words of praise, no arch of victory, no monumental 
pile is needed to endear him to the people. The story of his 
useful and honorable life illumines the brightest pages of our 
liistory, and the fruits of his incessant labors, read and known 
of all men, give luster to his name and will perpetuate his 
memory. "He was a man, take him for all in all, we shall 
not look upon his like again ; " a man of tireless activity' and 
industry, and unsurpassed integrity in public, professional and 
private life. 

In the councils of the nation he bore a conspicuous and 
honorable part in the legislation necessary for the preservation 
and reconstruction of the Union, and is one of the most dis- 
tinguished figures in our political history. 

During nearly a quarter of a century of public service, when 
strong and brilliant men of both political parties fell, either by 
temptation or wicked and malicious denunciation, Roscoe Conkling's 
fair fame and honor was untouched. 

He was above alike corruption and suspicion. In an age 
when vituperation and calumny arc the stock in trade of political 
warfare, he bore himself with sucli dignity and uprightness as 
to command the respect of all. 



OF THE State of New York. 9 

Although assailed and hounded and set upon by those who 
were jealous of his well-earned and richly-deserved success — 
although raisrepresented, misjudged and wronged, and his proud, 
sensitive, high-spirited and chivalric soul wounded — yet the smell 
of fire was not on his garment. 

All the shafts of malice fell idle and harmless against the 
imjDenetrable armor of uj^rightness and self-respect, with which 
he was fully panoplied. 

He was above them all. He rested then, as now, "the knight 
without fear and without reproach," in the perpetual sunshine 
of an undying fame. 

Sincere in his convictions, he despised shams and false pretense 
and hypocritical professions. 

V He thought for himself, and spoke what he thought. He was 
loyal to his own convictions. Friendship could not swerve him 
from the path of duty. Aml^ition could not tempt him. Enemies 
did not and could not daunt him. He was an open, honorable, 
manly foe ; a loyal, true and constant friend. He never turned 
the back of his hand to a friend, nor his back to an enemy. 
He . never " crooked the pregnant hinges of the knee that thrift 
might follow fawning." He never masqueraded. He was, as you 
saw him, the same at all times, in all places, and under all cir- 
cumstances — the soul of honor, f, 

" Faithful found among the faithless. 
Unshaken, unseduced, unterrifled ; 
His loyalty kept, his love, his zeal. 
Nor number, nor example, 
With him wrought to swerve from truth, 
Or change his constant mind." 

At the full meridian of intellectual greatness, with many 
years of usefulness and renown before him, at a time when, 
more than ever before, his magnificent leadership was required 
in the party of which he was so many years a conspicuous 
member, this great and good, honest, true and incorruptible man 
has closed his eyes in the di'eamless sleep of death, 
2 



10 Proceedings of the Legislature 

AVhy this must be is beyond human ken. Why this brave, 
strong, noble, lion-hearted man should go out from the activities 
aud grand possibilities of a life such as his, and when he was so 
much needed b}' his party, his State and country, we know not. 

To the stern decrees of an All-wise and Overruling Provi- 
dence we bow with grief-stricken hearts. At the portals of his 
grave the whole civilized world mourns. 

"He did not fall 
Like drooping flowers that no man noticeth. 

But like a great branch of some stately tree, 
Rent in a tempest and flung down to death. 

Thick with green leafage — so that piteously 
Each passer by that ruin shuddereth, 

And saith, 'The gap this breach hath left is wide. 

The loss thereof can never be supplied.'" 

As a born leader of men, as statesman or legislator, as 
lawyer, as citizen, as friend, we honor him and revere his 
memory. 

To the loving and beloved wife and daughter, to his family, 
to the world, he has left a legacy greater, better and grander 
than earthly riches — a good name, a reputation untarnished, an 
integrity unimpaired ; for, with Aristides, he could exclaim : 
"These are clean hands." 

Senator Low said : 

The Angel of Death has never taken a more kingly man, 
nor a more noble representative of all that is noblest and great- 
est in our civilization. I have known Roscoe Conkling well for 
the past thirty years ; and among the great men who have 
honored their country and the world during that eventful period, 
he was the peer of the greatest and wisest and noblest of them 
all. He was a born leader of men, an intellectual giant ; he 
never found his e(|ual on the platform or in the arena of the 
Senate chamber. In his long service and public life he was free 
from all taint or suspicion of wrong or improper acts. He set 



OF THE State of New York. ll 

an example well worthy of the imitation of the young men of 
the country. His loss will he long and keenly felt, and the 
mourning for his untimely taking off will be deep and lasting. 

Senator Cantok said : 

I feel, Mr. President, that some expression oi oi)ini()U should 
be given by those to whom Roscoe Conkling was politically 
opposed for so many years of his public life. The Democratic 
party, to which he was always so honorably opposed, and vigor- 
ously opposed, found in him an upright, an honorable, a consist- 
ent and a persistent i^olitical foe. He was of that class of men 
who rely absolutely uj^on his conviction of what was proper and 
right upon principle. He always advocated from a consistency 
of purpose, and a direct manly belief that they were just and 
honorable. And in every legislative or official act, he was of 
that class of men, of whom our community can not boast so 
many, who are absolutely devoted to principle and conviction, 
and who believe that their country rises, at times, higher than 
party considerations. The life of Roscoe Conkling was one that 
was fraught with great and noble deeds. As a Member of 
Congress he was a representative faithful to his trust, faithful 
to his people in the advocacy of all public measures which, in 
his judgment, redounded to the j)ublic benefit ; faithful in all 
respects ; his services will be readily recognized and aj^preciated, 
not onl}^ by the people of the district which he so well repre- 
sented, and by the iDeoj^le of the State whose Senator he was 
for two terms in the Senate of the United States ; but, sir, he 
has found a place in the hearts of all the peojDle who believe 
that honesty of purpose and devotion to country rise paramount 
to all other considerations. I heartily second the adoj^tion of 
the resolutions. 

Senator Coggeshall offered the following: 

Resolved, As a token of respect to the memory of the 
deceased, that the Senate do now adjourn. 

The resolution was adopted. 



12 PR0CEEDINGF5 OF THE LEGISLATURE 

IN ASSEMBLY: 

April 19, 1888. 

Mr. Beatty offered the followino; resolution : 

Eexoh-tul (if the Seuate concur), That a joint comniittee of nine 
Members of the Assembly and six Senators be appointed to 
attend the funeral of Hon. Roscoe Conkling. 

The resolution was unanimously adopted. 



IN SENATE: 

April 19, 1888. 

Senator Coggeshall offered the following: 

Whereas, The funeral of the Hon. Roscoe Conkling will occur 
in the city of New York on Friday, the twentieth instant ; and 

Whereas, His distinguished services in jjublic life and his great 
eminence as a statesman, call for a marked expression of the 
high esteem in which he was held by the people of the State ; 
therefore, be it 

Reiiolmd (if the Assembly concur), That when the Senate 
and Assembly adjourn this evening, it bo until jNEonday eve- 
ning at a qiiarter past eight o'clock. 

The Pkesident init the (juestion, and the resolution 
was adopted. 

The President aiinouueed the following committees, 
pursuant to the concurrent resolutions of the Senate 
and Assembly, to attend the funeral of the Hon. 
JloscoE Conkling, and to mnko arrangements for ni)i)ro- 
])riate memorial services by the Legislature: Senators 
Coggeshall, Lewis, Sweet, Laitghlin, Murphy and 



OF THE State of New York. 13 

Reilly ; also, to attend the funeral in the city of 
New York : Senators Coggeshall, Sweet, Van Cott, 
O'Connor, Cantor and Stabler. 

The Assembly returned the resolutions relative to the 
death of the Hon. Roscoe Conkling, with a message 
that they had concurred in the passage of the same 
without amendment, and had appointed as a com- 
mittee on the part of the House Messrs. Husted, 
Gallagher, Huntting, Enz, Beatty, Blumenthal, John 
Martin, Gordon and Kent. 



IN ASSEMBLY: 

April 19, 1888. 

The Senate sent for concurrence the following 
message : 

Resolved, That the Senate of the State of New York learns 
with deep sorrow and profound regret of the death of the Hon. 
E.OSCOE Conkling. His long and distinguished services in Con- 
gress as a Representative and Senator from the State of New 
York, his great intellectual attainments and brilliant record, his 
honesty of public career and integrity, his loyalty of friendship 
and nobility of character, his illustrious and successful achieve- 
ments, make his name and fame the common heritage of our 
State and nation, and enshrine him in the hearts of the people. 

Resolved (if the Assembly concur). That a committee of five 
Senators and nine Members of the Assembly be appointed by 
the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the Assembly to 
attend the funeral of Mr. Conkling, and to make arrangements 
for appropriate memorial services by the Legislature. 

The resolutions were unanimously adopted. 



14 Proceedings of the Legislature of New York. 

The Speaker announced the following committee to 
attend the funeral of the Hon. Roscoe Conkling and 
to draft resolutions : Mr. Husted, Mr. Gallaghee, Mr. 
HuNTTiNG, Mr. Enz, Mr. Beatty, Mr. Blumenthal, Mr. 
John Martin, Mr. Gordon and Mr. Kent. 

The Senate sent for concurrence the following 
resolution : 

Whereas, The funeral of the Hon. Roscoe Conkling will occur 
in the city of New York on Friday, the twentieth inst., and 

Whereas, His distinguished services in public life, and his 
great eminence as a statesman call for a marked expression of 
the esteem with which he was held by the people of this State ; 
therefore, be it 

Resolved (if the Assembly concur), That when the Senate and 
Assembly adjourn this evening, it be until Monday evening next 
at a quarter-past eight o'clock. 

The resolution was adopted. 



IN ASSEMBLY : 

MoNPAY Evening, Ajiril 30, 1888. 

The Senate sent for concurrence a resolution in the 
words following : 

Resolved (if the Assembly concur). That a joint committeej 
having in charge the exercises in memory of the late Roscoe 
Conkling, be requested to invite to attend the exercises the 
members of the present Congress, and such members of preced- 
ing sessions as sat in the House or Senate with Mr. Conkling. 

The resolution was adopted. 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS 



ROSCOE CON KLI NG 



Robert G. Ingersoll, 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



New York State Legislature, at Albany, N. Y 



MEMORIAL ADDRESS. 



fl^OSCOE CONKLING — a great man, an orator, a 
~= statesman, a lawyer, a distinguished citizen of the 
jj Republic, in the zenith of his fame and power 
has reached his journey's end; and we are met, here 
in the city of his birth, to pay our tribute to his 
worth and work. He earned and held a pTOud posi- 
tion in the public thought. He stood for independence, 
for courage, and above all for absolute integrity, and 
his name was known and honored by many millions of 
his fellow-men. 

The literature of many lands is rich with the 
tributes that gratitude, admiration and love have paid 
to the great and honored dead. These tributes disclose 
the character of nations, the ideals of the human 
race. In them we find the estimates of greatness — 
the deeds and lives that challenged praise and thrilled 
the hearts of men. 

In the presence of death, the good man judges as 
he would be judged. He knows that men are only 
fragments — that the greatest walk in shadow, and that 
faults and failures mingle with the lives of all. 

In the grave should be buried the prejudices and 
passions born of conflict. Charity should hold the 
scales ^in which are weighed the deeds ^ of men. 
3 



1(S Memorial Address on Koscoe Conkling. 

Peculiarities, traits born of locality and surroundings — 
these are but the dust of the race — these are acci- 
dents, drapery, clothes, fashions, that have nothing to 
do with the man except to hide his character. They 
are the clouds that cling to mountains. Time gives 
us clearer vision. That which was merely local fades 
away. The words of envy are forgotten, and all 
there is of sterling worth remains. He who was 
called a partisan is a patriot. The revolutionist and 
the outlaw are the founders of nations, and he who 
was regarded as a scheming, selfish politician becomes 
a statesman, a philosopher, whose words and deeds 
shed light. 

Fortunate is that nation great enough to know the 
great. When a great man dies — one who has nobly 
fought the battle of a life, who has been faithful 
to every trust, and has uttered his highest, noblest 
thought— one who has stood proudly by the right in 
spite of jeer and taunt, neither stopped by foe nor 
swerved by friend — in honoring him, in speaking words 
of praise and love above his dust, we pay a tribute to 
ourselves. 

How poor this world would be without its graves, 
without the memories of its mighty dead. Only the 
voiceless speak forever. 

Intelligence, integrity and courage are the great 
|)illars that support the State. 

Above all, the citizens of a free nation should 
lionor the brave and independent man — the man of 
stainless integrity, of will nnd intellectual force. Such 
men are the Atlases on whose mighty shoulders rest 



Memoeial Address on Eoscoe Conkling. 19 

the great fabric of the republic. Flatterers, cringers, 
crawlers, time-servers are the dangerous citizens of a 
democracy. They who gain applause and power by 
pandering to the mistakes, the prejudices and passions 
of the multitude, are the enemies of liberty. 

When the intelligent submit to the clamor of the 
many, anarchy begins and the rei)ublic reaches the edge 
of chaos. Mediocrity, touched with ambition, flatters 
the base and calumniates the great, while the true 
patriot, who will do neither, is often sacrificed. 

In a government of the people a leader should be a 
teacher — he should carry the torch of truth. 

Most people are the slaves of habit — followers of 
custom — believers in the wisdom of the past — and were 
it not for brave and splendid souls, " the dust of 
antique time would lie unswept, and mountainous error 
be too highly lieaped for truth to overpeer." Custom 
is a prison, locked and barred by those who long ago 
were dust, the keys of which are in the keeping of 
the dead. 

Nothing is grander than when a strong, intrepid man 
breaks chains, levels walls and breasts the many- 
headed mob like some great cliff that meets and 
mocks the innumerable billows of the sea. 

The politician hastens to agree with the majority — 
insists that their prejudice is patriotism, that their 
ignorance is wisdom; — not that he loves them, but 
because he loves himself. The statesman, the real 
reformer, points out the mistakes of the multitude, 
attacks the prejudices of his countrymen, laughs at 
their follies, denounces their cruelties, enlightens and 



20 Memorial Address on Boscoe Conkling. 

enlarges their minds and educates the conscience — 
not because he loves himself, but because he loves 
and serves the right and wishes to make his country 
great and free. 

With him defeat is but a spur to further effort. 
He who refuses to stoop, who can not be bribed by 
the promise of success, or the fear of failure — who 
walks the highway of the right, and in disaster stands 
erect, is the only victor. Nothing is more despicable 
than to reach fame by crawling, — position by cringing. 

When real history shall be written by the truthful 
and the wise, these men, these kneelers at the shrines 
of chance and fraud, these brazen idols worshipped 
once as gods, will be the very food of scorn, while 
those who bore the burden of defeat, who earned and 
kept their self-respect, who would not bow to man or 
men for place or power, will wear upon their brows 
the laurel mingled with the oak. 

RoscoE Conkling was a man of superb courage. 

He not only acted without fear, but he had that 
fortitude of soul that bears the consequences of the 
course pursued without complaint. He was charged 
with being proud. The charge was true — he was 
proud. His knees were as inflexible as the "unwedge- 
able and gnarled oak," but he was not vain. Vanity 
rests on the opinion of others — pride, on our own. 
The source of vanity is from without — of pride, from 
within. Vanity is a vane that turns, a willow that 
bends, with every breeze — pride is the oak that defies 
the storm. One is cloud — the other rock. One is 
weakness — the other strength. 



Memokial Address on'Koscoe Conkling. 21 

This imperious man entered public life in the dawn 
of the reformation — at a time when the country needed 
men of pride, of principle and courage. The institu- 
tion of slavery had poisoned all the springs of power. 
Before this crime ambition fell upon its knees, — poli- 
ticians, judges, clergymen, and merchant-princes bowed 
low and humbly, with their hats in their hands. The 
real friend of man was denounced as the enemy of 
his country — the real enemy of the human race was 
called a statesman and a patriot. Slavery was the 
bond and pledge of peace, of union, and national great- 
ness. The temple of American liberty was finished — 
the auction-block was the corner-stone. 

It is hard to conceive of the utter demoralization, 
of the political blindness and immorality, of the patri- 
otic dishonesty, of the cruelty and degradation of a 
people who supplemented the incomparable Declaration 
of Independence with the Fugitive Slave Law. 

Think of the honored statesmen of that ignoble time 
who wallowed in this mire, and who, decorated with 
dripping filth, received the plaudits of their fellow-men. 
The noble, the really patriotic, were the victims of 
mobs, and the shameless were clad in the robes of office. 

But let us speak no word of blame — let us feel 
that each one acted according to his light — according 
to his darkness. 

At last the conflict came. The hosts of light and 
darkness prepared to meet upon the fields of war. 
The question was presented: Shall the Republic be 
slave or free? The Republican party had triumphed at 
the polls. The greatest man in our history was Presi- 



22 Memorial Address on Koscoe Conbxing. 

dent elect. The victors were appalled— they shrank 
from the great responsibility of success. In the pres- 
ence of rebellion they hesitated — they offered to return 
the fruits of victory. Hoping to avert war they were 
willing that slavery should become immortal. An 
amendment to the Constitution was proposed, to the 
effect that no subsecpient amendment should ever be 
made that in any way should interfere with the right 
of man to steal his fellow- men. 

This, the most marvelous proposition ever submitted 
to a Congress of civilized men, received in the House 
an overwhelming majority, and the necessary two-thirds 
in the Senate. The Rei)ublican party, in the moment 
of its triumph, deserted every principle for which it 
had so gallantly contended, and with the trembling 
hands of fear laid its convictions on the altar of 
compromise. 

The Old Guard, numbering .but sixty-five in the 
House, stood as firm as the three hundred at Ther- 
mopylae. Thaddeus Stevens — as maliciously right as 
any other man was ever wrong — refused to kneel. 
Owen Lovejoy, remembering his brother's noble blood, 
refused to surrender, and on the edge of disunion, 
in the shadow of civil war,' with the air filled with 
sounds of dreadful preparation, while the Republican 
party was retracing its steps, Roscoe Conkling voted 
No. This puts a wreath of glory on his tomb. From 
that vote to the last moment of his life he was a 
champion of ecpial rights, stanch and stalwart. 

From that moment he stood in the front rank. 
He never wavered and he never swerved. By his devo: 



Memorial Address on Eoscoe Conkling. 23 

tion to principle — ^his courage, the splendor of his 
diction, — by his varied and profound knowledge, his 
conscientious devotion to the great cause, and by his 
intellectual scope and grasp, he won and held the 
admiration of his fellow-men. 

Disasters in the field, reverses at the polls, did not 
and could not shake his courage or his faith. He knew 
the ghastly meaning of defeat. He knew that the great 
ship that slavery sought to strand and wreck was 
freighted with the world's sublimest hope. 

He battled for a nation's life — for the rights of 
slaves — the dignity of labor, and the liberty of all. He 
guarded with a father's care the rights of the hunted, 
the hated and despised. He attacked the savage stat- 
utes of the reconstructed States with a torrent of invec- 
tive, scorn and execration. He was not satisfied until 
the freedman was an American Citizen — clothed with 
every civil right — until the Constitution was his shield — 
until the ballot was his sword. And long after we are 
dead, the colored man in this and other lands will speak 
his name in reverence and love. Others wavered, but 
he stood firm; some were false, but he was proudly 
true — fearlessly faithful unto death. 

He gladly, proudly grasped the hands of colored 
men who stood with him as makers of our laws and 
treated them as equals and as friends. The cry of 
" social equality," coined and uttered by the cruel and 
the base, was to him the expression of a great and 
splendid truth. He knew that no man can be the equal 
of one he robs — that the intelligent and unjust are not 
the superiors of the ignorant and honest — and he also 



24 Memorial Address on Eoscoe Conkling. 

felt, and i^roudly felt, that if he were not too great to 
reach the hand of help and recognition to the slave, 
no other Senator could rightfully refuse. 

We rise by raising others— and he who stoops above 
the fallen, stands erect. 

Nothing can be grander than to sow the seeds of 
noble thoughts and virtuous deeds — to liberate the 
bodies and the souls of men — to earn the grateful 
homage of a race — and then, in life's last shadowy 
hour, to know that the historian of Liberty will be 
compelled to write your name. 

There are no words intense enough, — with heart 
enough — to express my admiration for the great and 
gallant souls who have in every age and every land 
upheld the right, and who have lived and died for 
freedom's sake. 

In our lives have been the grandest years that man 
has lived, that Time has measured by the flight of 
worlds. 

The history of that great Party that let the 
oppressed go free — that lifted our nation from the 
depths of savagery to freedom's cloudless heights, and 
tore with holy hands from every law the words that 
sanctified the cruelty of man, is the most glorious in 
the annals of our race. Never before was there such 
a moral exaltation — never a party with a purpose so 
])ure and high. It was the embodied conscience of a 
nation, the enthusiasm of a people guided by wisdom, 
the impersonation of justice; and the sublime victory 
achieved loaded even the conquered with all the rights 
that freedom can bestow. 



Memorial Address on Roscoe Conkling. 25 

RoscoE Conkling was an absolutely honest man. 

Honesty is the oak around which all other virtues 
cling. Without that they fall, and groveling die in 
weeds and dust. He believed that a nation should 
discharge its obligations. He knew that a promise 
could not be made often enough, or emphatic enough, 
to take the place of payment. He felt that the promise 
of the government was the promise of every citizen — 
that a national obligation was a personal debt, and 
that no possible combination of words and pictures 
could take the place of coin. He uttered the splendid 
truth that "the higher obligations among men are not 
set down in writing signed and sealed, but reside in 
honor." He knew that repudiation was the sacrifice 
of honor — the death of the national soul. He knew 
that without character, without integrity, there is no 
wealth, and that below poverty, below bankruptcy, is 
the rayless abyss of repudiation. He upheld the 
sacredness of contracts, of plighted national faith, and 
helped to save and keep the honor of his native 
land. This adds another laurel to his brow. 

He was the ideal representative, faithful and incor- 
ruptible. He believed that his constituents and his 
country were entitled to the fruit of his experience, 
to his best and highest thought. No man ever held 
the standard of responsibility higher than he. He voted 
according to his judgment, his conscience. He made 
no bargains — he neither bought nor sold. 

To correct evils, abolish abuses and inaugurate 
reforms, he believed was not only the duty, but the 
privilege, of a legislator. He neither sold nor mort- 
4 



26 Memokial Addeess on Roscoe Conkling. 

gaged himself. He was in Congress during the years 
of vast expenditure, of war and waste — when the credit 
of the nation was loaned to individuals — when claims 
were thick as leaves in June, when the amendment of 
a statute, the change of a single word, meant millions, 
and when empires were given to corporations. He 
stood at the summit of his power — peer of the great- 
est — a leader tried and trusted. He had the tastes of 
a prince, the fortune of a peasant, and yet he never 
swerved. No corporation was great enough or rich 
enough to purchase him. His vote could not be bought 
"for all the sun sees, or the close earth wombs, or the 
profound seas hide." His hand was never touched by 
any bribe, and on his soul there never was a sordid 
stain. Poverty was his priceless crown. 

Above his marvelous intellectual gifts — above all 
place he ever reached, — above the ermine he refused, — 
rises his integrity like some great mountain peak — and 
there it stands, firm as the earth beneath, pure as the 
stars above. 

He was a great lawj^er. He understood the frame- 
work, the anatomy, the foundations of law; was familiar 
with the great streams and currents and tides of 
authority. 

He knew the history of legislation — the principles 
that have been settled upon the fields of war. He 
knew the maxims, — those crystallizations of common 
sense, those hand-grenades of argument. He was not 
a case-lawyer — a decision index, or an echo ; he was 
original, thoughtful and profound. He had breadth and 
scope, resource, learning, logic, and above all, a sense 



Memorial Addkess on Eoscoe Conkling. 27 

of justice. He was painstaking- and conscientious — 
anxious to know the facts — ])reparing for every attack, 
ready for every defense. He rested only when the end 
was reached. During the contest, he neither sent nor 
received a flag of truce. He was true to his clients — 
making their case his. Feeling responsibility, he lis- 
tened patiently to details, and to his industry there 
were only the limits of time and strength. He was a 
student of the Constitution. He knew the boundaries 
of State and Federal jurisdiction, and no man was more 
familiar with those great decisions that are the peaks 
and promontories, the headlands and the beacons, of the 
law. 

He was an orator, — earnest, logical, intense and 
picturesque. He laid the foundation with care, with 
accuracy and skill, and rose by " cold gradation and 
well balanced form " from the corner-stone of statement 
to the domed conclusion. He filled the stage. He 
satisfied the eye — the audience was his. He had that 
indefinable thing called presence. Tall, commanding, 
erect — ample in speech, graceful in compliment. Titanic 
in denunciation, rich in illustration, prodigal of com- 
parison and metaphor — and his sentences, measured and 
rhythmical, fell like music on the enraptured throng. 

He abhorred the Pharisee, and loathed all conscien- 
tious fraud. He had a profound aversion for those 
who insist on putting base motives back of the good 
deeds of others. He wore no mask. He knew his 
friends — his enemies knew him. 

He had no patience with pretense — with patriotic 
reasons for unmanly acts. He did his work and bravely 
spoke his thought. 



28 Memorial Address on IIoscoe Conklin^. 

Sensitive to the last degree, he keenly felt the blows 
and stabs of the envious and obscure — of the smallest, 
of the weakest — but the greatest could not drive him 
from conviction's field. He would not stoop to ask or 
give an explanation. He left his words and deeds to 
justify themselves. 

He held in light esteem a friend who heard with 
half -believing ears the slander of a foe. He walked a 
highway of his own, and kept the company of his self- 
resp^ect. He would not turn aside to avoid a foe — to 
greet or gain a friend. 

In his nature there was no compromise. To him 
there were but two paths — the right and wrong. He 
was maligned, misrepresented and misunderstood — but 
he would not answer. He knew that character speaks 
louder far than any words. He was as silent then as 
he is now — and his silence, better than any form of 
speech, refuted every charge. 

He was an American — proud of his country, that was 
and ever will be proud of him. He did not find ])erfec- 
tion only in other lands. He did not grow small and 
shrunken, withered and apologetic, in the presence of 
those upon whom greatness had been thrust by chance. 
He could not be overawed by dukes or lords, nor 
flattered into vertebrateless subserviency by the patron- 
izing smiles of kings. In the midst of conventionalities 
he had the feeling of suffocation. He believed in the 
royalty of man, in the sovereignty of the citizen, and in 
the matchless greatness of this Republic. 

He was of the classic mould — a figure from the 
antique world. He had the i)ose of the great statues — 



Memorial Address on Eoscoe Conkling. 29 

the pride and bearing of the intellectual Greek, of the 
conquering Roman, and he stood in the wide free air, 
as though within his veins there flowed the blood of 
a hundred kings. 

And as he lived he died. Proudly he entered the 
darkness — or the dawn — that we call death. Unshrink- 
ingly he passed beyond our horizon, beyond the twi- 
light's purple hills, beyond the utmost reach of human 
harm or help — to that vast realm of silence or of joy 
where the innumerable dwell, and he has left with us 
his wealth of thought and deed — the memory of a 
brave, imperious, honest man, who bowed alone to 
death. 

Mr. HusTED said : 

Mr. Chairman. — I move that the thanks of the Legislature be 
tendered to the Hon. Kobeet G. Ingersoll, for the masterly ora- 
tion to which we have listened; and, sir, in making this motion, I 
am confident that I express the unanimous sentiment of this body, 
when I say that in purity of style, in poetic expression, in cogency 
of statement and brilliancy of rhetoric it stands unrivaled among 
the eulogies of either ancient or modern days. As effective as 
Demosthenes, as polished as Cicero, as ornate as Burke, as 
scholarly as Gladstone, the orator of the evening, in surpassing 
others, has eclipsed himself. 

Senator Coggeshall said : * 

Mr. Chairman. — No words that I can utter will add to the able 
and eloquent eulogy pronounced by Mr. Ingersoll upon the life, 
character and services of Roscoe Conkling. 

It is indeed a worthy tribute by one of America's most gifted 
orators to one of the foremost men of his time. 

On behalf of the Senate and Assembl}', I second the motion 
of the fifentleman from Westchester. 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



OF 



ROSCOE CONKLING 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



The distinguished lawyer, orator, political leader and statesman, 
RoscoE CoNKLiNG, wliose untimely death the whole country 
mourns, Avas born in the city of Albany, on the 3d of October, 
1829, and was the youngest son of Judge Alfred Conkling, who 
was United States Judge for the Northern District of New 
York for more than a quarter of a century, or from 1825, 
when John Quiucy Adams was President, to 1852. Judge 
Conkling was afterwards appointed Minister to Mexico, under 
President Fillmore, and died at an advanced age in the city of 
Utica, in 1874. He was a native of Amagansett, Suffolk county, 
in this State, and was of English descent. 

RoscoE Conkling received an academic education, and had 
the advantage of excellent training in a home of culture and 
refinement. The home schooling impressed upon him in his 
youth, the refining associations by which he was surrounded 
and the pure, moral atmosphere in which he was brought up, 
did not fail to infiuence him in later years; they were stamped 
into his life, became a part of it, and evidences of their influ- 
ence were among his most distinguishing characteristics through- 
out a brilliant and eventful career. 

In 1846, at the age of seventeen, he entered, as a student, the 
law oflice of Spencer & Kernan, in Utica. It is not remarked 
of him that he was a plodder in his legal studies, although he 
gave to them as much attention and energy as might be expected 
of one so young in years. Of rhetoric, oratory and politics, he 
was passionately fond, and to them he devoted no small share 
5 



34 Biographical Sketch of Eoscoe Conkling. 

of his time and attention. About the time of his admission to 
the bar, and when he was scarcely twenty-one years of age, he 
was appointed by Governor Hamilton Fish to fill a vacancy in 
the office of 'district attorney of Oneida county. For this office 
he was afterwards nominated by the Whigs for a full term, but 
was defeated. 

This defeat seems to have checked, for a time, his ambition 
for political preferment. For several years he applied himself 
industriously to the practice of his profession, in which he rapidly 
rose to remarkable prominence, lieiug counted an advocate of 
far more than ordinary force and vigor. When the old Whig 
party went down, after the disastrous defeat in 1852, and the 
Republican party came into being a few years later, it was an 
easy matter for Mr. Conkling to transfer his allegiance to the 
new organization. 

Always an anti-slavery man, he had no choice, when the restric- 
tion of slavery came to be the most prominent of National issues, 
but to be a Republican. 

Being a lover of liberty, and an unyielding foe of oppression 
and intolerance, he could not comprehend why the blessings of 
freedom should not be enjoyed by all men who had not by crime 
forfeited the right to them. He early saw, too, the incongruity 
of tolerating such an institution as human slavery in a republic 
whose founders had boldly proclaimed that " all men are created 
equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain 
unalienable rights, tliat among these are life, liberty, and the 
pursuit of happiness." This conviction of his early manhood 
never deserted him. 

He was ever stanch and true in his opposition to the 
extension of slavery, and there was no hesitancy in the support 
he gave to the emancipation proclamation of President Lincoln, 
or to the amendment to the Constitution, subsequently adopted, 
bv which slavery was forever repudiated and abolished. 

In Mr. Conkling the colored people of America had a true 



BioGRAriiicAL Sketch of Eoscoe Conkling. 35 

aud steadfast friend, and if lie were not so effusive and demon- 
strative in this regard as some other men prominent in the 
party, his friendship was certainly more practical and effective. 
He never, in any circumstances, formed a political alliance with 
the party which had supported slavery. 

In the spring of 1858, Mr. Conkling was elected mayor of the 
city of Utica, a position which he held for two terms. His 
administration of the city government was a model of efhciency 
and economy. 

In November of the same year, when only twenty-nine years of 
age, he was elected to represent his district in Congress, succeeding 
the then somewhat celebrated O. B. Matteson. Taking his seat in 
the thirty-sixth Congress, in Decemlier, 1859, Mr. Conkling 
became, of course, one of the participants in the celebrated contest 
over the Speakership of the House, which resulted, after a struggle 
of nearly two months, in the election of the Republican candidate, 
William Pennington, of New Jersey, who had finally been substi- 
tuted for John Sherman. Mr. Conkling, being a new aud also a 
very young member, did not attempt to make himself conspicuous 
during the continuance of the thirty-sixth Congress, but was 
content to familiarize himself with parliamentary practice and 
the rules of the body of which he was a member, at the same 
time taking keen note of the active and exciting political events 
then occurring at the capital and elsewhere throughout the 
country. 

In 1867, while still a member of the Lower House, he was 
chosen Senator from New York, to succeed Ira Harris. He was 
reelected Senator in 1873, and again in 1879. In 1873 he Avas 
offered the Chief Justiceship of the Supreme Court of the United 
States, and also the Mission to the Court of St. James, by 
President Grant, and in 1882 he was appointed Associate Justice 
of the Supreme Court, by President Arthur. These positions he 
declined. During the two terms of President Grant, Mr. Conkling 
was his trusted adviser and friend, and wielded immense political 



36 Biographical Sketch of Roscoe Conkling. 

power in the State and iu the Nation. lu Congress his voice was 
always raised and his votes were always given npou the side of 
freedom and progress. He was an earnest supporter of President 
Lincoln's administration during the war of the Kebellion, and of 
President Grant's administration during the period of reconstruc- 
tion which followed. He was opposed to inflation ; combatted 
re])udiation iu all its forms, and constantly favored an honest 
currency and a faithful and full discharge of all the obligations of 
the government. As a political chieftain he governed men by the 
sheer force of intellect and will. He compelled obedience. He 
swept to his purpose with an impetuosity that brooked no restraint. 
Those who faltered or doubted were left behind; those who 
opposed were trampled down. Whenever he entered heart and 
soul into a political campaign he seldom failed of success. As a 
field marshal, as a leader of a political party in action, he had no 
superior. Twice his intrepid generalship saved his party, and 
rescued victory from assured defeat. Once, in 1872, after the 
secession of the Liberal Republicans and the nomination of 
Horace Greeley, and again in 1880, when Maine had given a 
Democratic majority, and the defeat of the Republican party 
seemed inevitable. No better proof of his splendid services can 
be had than the fact that after his retirement from public life his 
party was never victorious in the State or Nation. Iu May, 1881, 
Mr. Conkling resigned his seat iu the Senate of the United States. 
To the causes which led to this action it will, perhaps, at this time 
bo inappropriate to refer. The grave has closed over many of 
tlio chief actors in that stirring drama, and the mist of oblivion 
floats between us and the forgotten rivalries and dissensions of 
that eventful struggle. Justice, however, compels the statement 
that all impartial men, who are cognizant of the facts, now believe, 
what Mr. Conkling and his friends believed at the time of his 
resignation, that he was the victim of an unparalleled act of 
political ingratitude. 

The last few years of Mr. Conkling's life were spent in the 



Biographical Sketch of Boscoe Conkling. 37 

practice of his chosen profession in the city of New York. His 
success as a lawyer in the metropolis was phenomenal. Going 
there in the antumn of 1881, broken in health and struf^gling 
under a load of debt, contracted through the demands of friend- 
ship, he advanced almost at a single bound to the first rank at 
a bar, ])erliaps, the ablest in the world. As the result of six 
years incessant toil, he discharged every obligation not only, but 
amassed a princely fortune. He was employed in the most 
difficult and important causes, and although retainers were oftered 
him from almost ever}^ State in the Union, and- although during 
this period he argued causes in Missouri, Illinois, Massachusetts, 
Connecticut and New Jersey, he was compelled, especially during 
the last 3'ears of his life, to confine his practice almost exclusively 
to the courts of New York and the Supreme Court at Washington. 

His fame as a lawyer almost equals his fame as a statesman. 
When it is remembered that during his long and exacting 
Senatorial service he had practically abandoned the practice of 
the law, that when he opened his ofiice in New York he was 
alone, without business connection or clientage, and that he had 
to compete with a host of able practitioners entrenched in popular 
favor and jealous of any new aspirant for the emoluments and 
honors so long enjoyed by them, his success at the bar may be 
said to be without a parallel. The nearest approach to it may, 
perhaps, be found in the career of Mr. Judali P. Benjamin, at 
the bar of London. 

In the strength of his manhood, and in the vigor of his 
splendid physical and intellectual powers, Roscoe Conkling has 
been stricken down, and the work for which he was so well 
fitted must be entrusted to others. 

His death has removed New York's greatest and at one time 
her most conspicuous citizen. 

Mr. Conkling was many years ago married to the youngest 
sister of the late Governor Horatio Sevmour, who, with their only 
daughter and child, Mrs. Oakman, survives him. 



MEMORIAL TRIBUTES 



TO 



ROSCOE CONK LING 



Cabinet, Public Men of New York Sta' 



F»REiss OK Unitkd States. 



MEMORIAL TRIBUTES. 



Opinions ok the Cabinet. 
SECRETARY WHITNEY. 

I think his death will be a great shock to the country. I knew him 
well, particularly as a lawyer. When I was corporation counsel I was 
thrown with him on two or three occasions, desperate cases, and I have 
never seen any man who had a stronger personality, who had such strong 
convictions, and who was able to impress himself upon a court with 
greater power than he. He was upright by nature, and as a public man 
was an example of honesty and straightforward devotion to his views of 
duty. He held the highest position in the public mind. 



SECRETARY VILAS. 

Independently of his gifts of intellect, his grace of speech, and his 
public services, the qualities which commonly excite admiration and 
attract followers. Senator Conkling deserves to live long in the grateful 
memory of his countrymen for the lofty integrity and purity of his official 
life and character. A dominating spirit during a period when many 
instances of peculation and jobbery occurred, no one ever fixed vipon him 
any imputation of personal advantage arising from his performance of 
public service. He served the public and not himself while in office, and, 
though such fidelity be like a soldier's courage, demanded of every one, 
its conspicuous manifestation should receive recognition and gratitude. 



ATTORNEY-GENERAL GARLAND. 

Mr. Conkling was in the Senate when I came here in 1877, and I got 
acquainted with him pretty closely soon after I entered the Senate. 
Having been on tiie Judiciary Committee with him for a good part of the 
foiir years or more during which he remained in the Senate after I became 
a member of that body, I learned to know him very well. Our relations 
6 



42 Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 

were always cordial and friendly. He was a man of great energy of char- 
acter and an intellectual man decidedly. At times he was a man of great 
power. He was always an interesting figure in the Senate, and when in 
the proper mood was as companionable and interesting a man as I ever 
saw. He was a man capable of a great deal of usefulness, and I regret 
very much his loss. 



SECEETAEY ENDICOTT. 

I did not know Mr. Conkling personally, but he was a very able, prom- 
inent and distinguished man. His death is a great loss to the profession 
of the law, to which he has devoted himself so conspicuously for the last 
few years. 



POSTMASTER-GENEEAL DICKINSON. 

I passed an liuur in his company dui'ing his last visit to Washington a 
month ago, when he was here to argue a patent case. I thought then that 
1 had never seen liim in better health or more buoyant spirits. To me he 
was one of the most fascinating and charming men I ever met. As a 
lawyer he Avas great. His mind was comprehensive and luminous, show- 
ing right and wrong with wonderful clearness. When a legal question 
was presented to him, his intellectual processes determined for him what 
tlie law was, and he went to the books only after he had reached a conclu- 
sion. Democrats remember him as a statesman, and that on all great 
([uestions he was above party and was almost invariably right in his posi- 
tions. He has left the strong impress of his masterful personality, of his 
vigorous intellect, of his purity and his patriotism upon the history of the 
country. Altliougli, when he died, in name a private citizen, his influence 
upon public affairs was felt to be potent. It is an influence that will be 
missed by the whole country. 



Ol'lN10N« OK I^IIL^I. IC AlKN. 

GOYEENOE HILL. 

When apprised of tlie death of Roscok CoNKLiNa, (lovernor Hill said: 
The death of such a man as Mr. Conkling is a loss to the country at large, 
and especially the State he lived faithfully to serve. His career as a 
statesnuin has been an unusually clear and honest one, and the party to 
which he l)elonged is the only one that failed to do him honor. The 
people in general must mourn the loss of such a man and statesman. 



Memorial Twbutes to Roscoe Conkling. 43 



LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR JONES. 

EoscoE Conkling was tlie man wlio in affirming tlie honesty of liis con- 
victions was forced to sunder party ties, but he won by that very action 
the admiration of tlie people in general instead of simply party praise. 
He was a shining light in the midst of corruption. Personally he was one 
of the most courtly and" polished of men and his death removes at 
one stroke a man, a politician, and in the world's best sense, a public 
benefactor. 



NEW YORK STATE SENATORS. 

Senator Sloan : He was a meteoric light in the party, and a man of 
wonderful ability. 

Senator IvELLoad : He was the bi'avest, most honest leader the party 
ever liad. 

Senator Yedder : Had he lived he would have again controlled the 
party. 

Senator Murphy : As a man and a statesman it would be hard to find 
liis equal. 

Senator Cantor : His deatli is a loss to the State and to the countrj^ 
regardless of politics. 

Senator Riley : The loss of Roscoe Conklino will be felt Vjy the Repub- 
lican party of the State, he being the one man who could solidify it in the 
coming campaign. Democrats as well as Republicans will mourn the loss 
of one who despised hypocrisy and cant. 

Senator Lewis : In the death of Hon. Roscoe Conkling this State and 
nation are called upon to mourn for one of its brightest sons, an honest 
man, the noblest work of God. 

Senator Fassett : Roscoe Conkling was one of our great men. His posi- 
tion in American politics is unique. Men obeyed him, feared him and 
were devoted to him, but they rarely loved him. He lived alone. He had 
associates but no intimates. He met men but did not come into contact 
with them. In the peculiar lines in wliich his life ran he has in our history 
never had his equal. 

Senator Langbein : He was, in my judgment, the greatest orator and 
elocutionist in the nation — I think in the world." 

Senator Low : I have known Roscoe Conkling well for the past thirty 
years, and among the great men who liave honored their country and the 
woi'ld during that eventful period, he was the peer of the greatest and 
wisest and noblest of them all. 

Senator Arnold : Roscoe Conkling was the Chevalier Bayard of his age 
and country. He was "without fear and without reproach. " The State 
will never produce a man who occupies a higher place in her history for 
great talents, pure patriotism and distinguished public service." 

Senator Hawkins : One of the brainiest men in the country. Knew him 
from entrance into politics and always admired his ability." 



44 Memorl\l Tributes to Koscoe Conkling. 



NEW YOEK STATE ASSEMBLYMEN. 

Speaker Cole: Nature did more for Mr. Conkling than for perhaps 
any other Kepublican. He was unquestionably preeminent among our 
great men, and but for a few unfortunate mistakes in judgment would 
certainly have been president. 

Mr. HusTED : I have known him for years. In 1873 I seconded his 
nomination for Senator, and in 1879 nominated him at his request, on 
on both occasions receiving warm lettex's of thanks from him. I differed 
with him on the question of his I'oturu to the Senate in '81, but during the 
last year our relations resumed their old intimacy. 

Mr. RoESCH : Had I not been a Democrat I should have been a Conk- 
ling Republican. 

Mr. Kent : He was my next-door neighbor for yeai-s, and had close 
relations with my father. I admired him as an upright man and a great 
statesman. 

Mr. Eeatty: I always worked with him politically, and always sup- 
ported him in party conventions. His fine personal finalities make him a 
great loss to the Republican party, which he so much adorned. 



Or»INIOTsie^ OK THK F*RESS». 

From the Albany Morning Express, April 18. 
When Mr. Conkling resigned, he wont from a position of greater indi- 
vidual ixnver than any man had before exercised in tlie Empire State into 
a political oblivion as complete as it was possible for him to make it ; and 
he went driven out by the political party whose battles he had been fight- 
ing and winning for twenty-five years. His going was accepted as the 
natural development of a sentiment tliat had been growing in the Repub- 
lican party over since the close of the war, and which can be understand- 
ingly describ(Ml as opposition to bossism, or one-man power. Tlio hostility 
to Mr. Conkling was directed more against his method, or system, tliau 
against himself. The people recognized the fact that ho was supreme in 
the party in this State, and they resented it — more particularly did those 
resent it who had incurred his hostility or displeasure, and these latter 
became too numerous towards the end to have been much longer with- 
stood. Mr. Conkling's career was the embodied supremacy of the 
organization in jiolitics. He believed in it, he understood it thoroughly, 
and he realized its fullest capacity as an agimcy for control. He had no 
scruples about the application of State and Federal patronage to the 
consolidation of the maciiinery of the party. Wliere he failed, and imnec- 
essarily imperiled his organization, was in his absolute refusal at all times 
to stoop to conquer. There was an imiierialism about his nature which 
forbade him to parley. A man was either for him or against him, and it 
apparently made little diffei'enco which; but there was no middle ground. 
To liis friend he was ever geneious and loj'al ; to his enemy he was either 
indifferont or implacable. Though all the world were against him, Mr. 



Memorial Tributes to Koscoe Conkling. 45 

CoNKLiNG would never abate one jot or title, either of his conviction or 
his position. More than any other man who has lived in this country, Mr. 
Conkijnot possessed the qualities of leadership, with this single exception- 
Conciliation was a word not found in his dictionary. Compromise was 
foreign to his nature. Concession was repugnant to his reason. On the 
throne of the czars, he would have been a wise, generous and beneficent 
ruler. As an outgrowth of the free democracy of our institutions he was 
too strong, too higli and too unbending, not to break before the tornado 
of such a crisis as that which swept him from the proud j)osition of the 
uncrowned king of the people. 

This characteristic affords the clew to Mr. Conkling's power. Wlien we 
come to analyze it, we find that it all resolves itself back into that one 
word, power. He was power incarnate ; its embodiment physically, men- 
tally, morally. His rank among American statesmen is not likely to be as 
high as those among us who have been brought into personal contact 
with him may incline to think that it ought to have been, in view of his 
transcendent influence upon the politics of one decade in our history. 
Mr. CoNKLiNG was not a constructive statesman, in the larger sense of the 
word. He was not the originator of great measures, or the advocate of 
large movements. His skill was displayed in the correct and judicious 
management of current affairs. Neither was he a great orator, in the 
sense that we apply that term to Daniel Webster, or even to William H. 
Seward. Mr. Conkling made veiy few speeches which will live in litera- 
ture as models of the oratorical presentation of general principles, or be 
read by coming generations as the speeches of Burke are read. And yet, 
there is living to-day no American with capacity for so powerfully impress- 
ing and influencing an audience as Roscoe Conkling possessed, and there 
has been none to compare with him in his day and generation. There 
was a masterful eloquence in his simple appearance on the rostrum, and 
when to that was added his voice, his intonation, his gesture, and his 
strong, rugged, plain and penetrating Saxon, the sense of power was com- 
plete. It was so in the practice of his profession, and in his individual 
contact with men. Always there was the sense of mastery present in his 
presence and radiating in his utterance. Mr. Conkling's mind was virile, 
his judgment was firm and his will was as adamant. He was a man of 
great application, and labor to him was as congenial as play to a child. 
He had the capacity to master any subject, however abstruse or compli- 
cated, and it was his delight to conquer knotty problems in law or in 
politics. Perhaps the most important service he rendered his country 
during his public career, was in tlie framing and the passage of the elec- 
toral commission bill, under which the disputed presidential election of 
1876 was determined, and but for which the nation woidd most certainly 
have been plunged into civil war. In the advocacy of this bill Mr. Conk- 
ling made a speech of two days duration ; and the array of facts and 
details it contained regarding the practice and precedents of the Nation 
in the counting of electoral votes affords a correct insight into the thor- 
oughness and completeness of all his work. Of the faidts of his character 
we have spoken. They were all on the surface ; and they were of a kind 
to seriously curtail his capacity for usefulness. But now tluit he is gone, 
all the greatness of the man stands out in the public mind luminous and 
resplendent as the sun in the heavens. 



46 Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 

Fi'om the Albany Evening Journal, April 18. 

"The King of Shadows loves a shining marlc ; " and not in our country 
in many a day has he given such forcible expression to his passion as 
when lie marke<i Eoscoe Conklino for his own. It is ahuost impossible to 
realize that that acute intellect has ceased to be active and that that mag- 
nificent form lies cold in death. We have been so accustomed to associate 
Mr. Conkling with everything that was strong and manly and vigorous, 
that the announcement that he too has succumbed, while yet in the vigor 
of mature manhood, falls upon us with an effect at once depressing and 
bewildering. 

We shall not be accused of making an invidious distinction when we say 
that the death of Roscor Conklinc; has removed NeAv York's greatest, and 
at one time her most conspicuous citizen ; nor will anyone dispute us in 
saying that his death is, as his retirement from the public service was, a 
great loss to the whole country. The man was so robust in his treatment 
of all public questions, so earnest and forcible and convincing in argu- 
ment, so faithful in his dcA'otion to friends and so strong in his integrity, 
that those who admired him became almost his worshipers, while even 
those who opposed him could not withhold their respect. 

It was Mr. Conkj.ing's nature to be strong and positive. His convictions 
of right and wrong were intense, and, being so, he was not tolerant of 
those who antagonized them. He had all the qualifications of a great 
leader of men and director of their opinions, except the art of conciliation. 
That he despised as being something not far removed from hypocrisy, and 
consequently with conciliation he would have nothing to do. What he 
could not carry by direct and forcible assault he would not have — and 
herein lay his weakness as a political leader. That weakness, however, 
for by that name we suppose it must be called, was more than counter- 
balanced by his matchless courage, his sublime faith in the justice of the 
cause he espoused, his spotless integrity and his unswerving loyalty to 
country and friends. 

There was corruption in high places during the days in which Mr. Conk- 
ling took an active and leading part in public affairs, but no one ever 
entertained the thought that he was venal. The tone of public morality 
was undoubtedly lowered in consecpience of the enormous expenditures 
made necessary by the civil war; but Senator Conklin(;'s standard of 
virtue never fell. jNlean and petty things he despised, as he did those who 
practiced them ; but dishonesty he ai^hoired. With it he would make no 
compromise, nor with it would he hold any traffic. Better would it have 
been for our beloved land if more of our iniblic servants had possessed 
these rugged virtues in so marked a degree. 

The last few years of Mr. Conklinci's life have been spent quietly and 
unostentatiously, in the practice of his chosen profession, in which he 
deservedly and almost neces.sarilj'^ .stood high. Tho.se j'ears brought him 
peace of mind siu'h as he had long been a stiangcr to, and built up a for- 
tune which had bccoim* gn-atiy inq)aircd through no fault of his own. 
Although he had withdrawn from active participation in i)olitics, those 
who were so fortunate as to be in his contidence know that his heart went 
out to the great political organization with which he was so long, so hon- 
orably and so conspicuously identitietl, and that it was his earnest hope 



Memorial Tiubutes to Roscoe Conkling. 47 

to see it returned to power, chastened, purilied and strengthened by the 
experiences of the past few years. It would have been impossible for Mr. 
CoNKLiNt; to liave been anything but a Republican ; but his ideas of what 
Republicanism should j)e and stantl for were more lofty than those of the 
average politician. 

These last few years have also brought about a wonderful rcviilsiuu in 
the popukir feeling towards Mr. Conkling, and every one of them has 
largely increased the numbers of those who prayed for his return to public 
life and station. There were not wanting many who believed the time not 
far distant when there would be a popular demand for his coming to the 
front so strong as to amount to a summons which could not be disobeyed. 
And what a leader he would liave been ! How the grand old organization 
thus commanded would have shaken off all lethargy and gone into action 
contident and invincible! 

But that was not to be. In the strength of his manhood and in the vigor 
of his splendid physical and intellectual powers he has been stricken 
down; and the work for which he was so well fitted in most respects must 
be entrusted to others. It will be many a day before this noble character 
in American political history of the last quarter of a century will be for- 
gotten ; for the American jjeople are not prone to forget those of their 
statesmen who have proved themselves loyal to country, honest and 
faithful in her service and true in all things. Such a man was Roscoe 
CoNKLiNci, for whom the State of New York and, indeed, the whole nation, 
mourns to-day. 



From the Albany Sunday Press, April 22. 

Amid the tolling of sacretl bells and the oppressive hush of a grief- 
bowed multitude, Roscoe Conkling was yesterday laid to rest in the bosom 
of that mother whose refuge is common to all mortality. And ctiuld those 
dumb clods which bar his casket from human vision take unto themselves 
momentary intelligence and the language of man, doubtless they would 
yield warm expression to the distinction felt as immediate sentinels about 
the couch of a great chieftain, who rests from his labors and slumbers 
peacefully and well. Were death desirable and robbed of its revulsions 
by an implicit knowledge that it were truly a blissful transition ; were 
humanity intensely impressed that to die is gain and that the portals of the 
grave are but the frontier gates of a metropolis whose si)lendid propor- 
tions and surroundings are reserved for earth's probationary camlidates 
in probity and exalted citizenship, still, while the taking off of Roscoe 
Conkling and his interment amid the scenes of his dreams and affections, 
should be regarded as the just reward of an exemplary life and a fitting 
furlough to one who had served through the long campaign of every-day 
battles with conscious dignity and unquestioned valor, i:; would be hard to 
give him up. 

But human nature, as a rule, in its tender mould, despite the assurances 
of ecclesiastical doctors, has not as yet become enabled to recognize the 
summoning hence of a master mind and imperial presence as a mark of 



48 Memorial Tributes to Roscoe Conkling. 

favor from the Omnipotent Ruler. While fervently believing that a stain- 
less career on earth can form the sole passport to a full enjoyment of 
whatever of beatification lies beyond the tomb, its sentiments are too 
pronounced, its stoicisms all too limited, to admit of a sincere resignation 
to the stroke which removes for all time one whose talents compelled uni- 
versal admiration and whose conspicuous walk of life was a synonym for 
honesty. 

And it is this deep-seated love of scrupulous integrity, this proximate 
reverence of extraordinary intellect, that makes America to-day a mourner 
at the shrine of Roscoe Conkling's memory. Is it strange that the tears 
of a great people should moisten the mound of one whose eminence was a 
nation's pride ? Is it unnatural that the fairest floral growths above his 
coffined form should ever sparkle with the dewdrops of human sympathy 
and fraternal sorrow ? Is it, we say, an exhibition of surprising moment 
that a man among men, a brilliant public character where official life is 
all too questionable, a y)rivate citizen whose retirement had been marked 
by modest bearing and unceasing toil, should be followed to the tomb by 
the sobbing of millions Avho had learned to jjroperly estimate his unusual 
manhood and to boast him as a product of republican institutions ? 

Such a man was Roscoe Conkling. However, if so inclined, we may 
question the wisdom of that course which led to his laying down the oner- 
ous duties of public life ; to whatever extent we may disagree with certain 
political theories that enlisted his faith, not one among us would dare 
impeach his honor or cast the slightest cloud upon his respectability or 
actuating motives. Wc marked him, as with high emprise he advocated 
vital doctrines on the floor of our Federal Senate. We stood enchained 
by his earnest eloquence and applauded his Titanic blows for sound gov- 
ernment and generous citizenship. We felt that with such a fearless, 
steady counselor aboard, the ship of state could not well go upon those 
rocks whicli history attests ever line the pathway of our popular form of 
rule. Nor were we deceived. He was uniformly true to the interests 
of the i)eople. He espoused in practice as well as in theoiy that 
central idea of the best government, the greatest good to the greatest 
number. He was not hemmed in by sectional prejudices and his memory 
will be as tenderly cherished by the impassioned people of our tropical 
States as by those who dwell among the severer conditions of this time- 
honored municipality which vaunts his birthplace. 

Was he forgotten when he returned to his barrister's books, poorer by 
much than when he left them to enrich his country by the tribute of his 
genius? Assuredly not. AVe noted with delight his testimony to the 
peace of mind and unalloyed joy that he discovered in communion with 
the legal auth(jrs. Our fears tiiat his sudden adoption of a life so contrary 
to that to whicli lie had for years been jxccustomed, would result in misan- 
thropic numifestations were speedily dispelled. His private life was as 
serenely beautiful as had been his public career strikingly lustrous. He 
was not moved by repeated temptations to return to that vortex which had 
previously engulfed his happiness. His time and talent were riveted upon 
a single purpose, to gain a competence for those who were proper oljjects 
of his care, and in the consumnuition of tJiis ambition he found abundant 
satisfaction. 



Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 49 

And so lived and pass^'d away one of America's noblest sons, a profound 
statesman, a distinguished jurist, a representative citizen. And future 
generations, studying his life and labors, and realizing in him a dernon- 
stratit)n of the possibility of political purity, may well take up our grief 
at his cutting down in his magnificent manhood and splendid powers, and 
pause to appreciate the epitaph to-day mentally inscribed in the hearts of 
his countrymen, he was ax honest man. 



From The Albany Argus, Api-il 18. 

Death has again struck a shining mark, one- of the most brilliant that, 
in a generation, has reflected the lights and shades of Eepublicanism. 
The ablest organizer, most accomplished orator, most daring partisan and 
most magnetic leader that the Republican party ever had in this State, 
died in New York this morning. He had i:)assed out of politics nearly 
seven years before his death, it is true, but there were always hopes enter- 
tained by some among the party, to which he had for years devoted his 
great talents, that the day would come when the Achilles of the Republi- 
can party would leave his tent and do battle once more. But Eoscoe 
Conkling cast his all on the issues of the unexampled conflict of 1881 and, 
defeated there, his pride would not permit him to reappear in the field 
again. There were other considerations, too, wdiy Achilles remained in 
his tent, even while the myrmidons were being slaughtered at election 
after election. The party had degenerated, and a lot of nobodies had suc- 
ceeded the giants of other days. He could not bow his head to the yoke 
of pigmies, nor soil his fame and record in mingling with such degenerate 
successors of the men who made the Republican party a power in the land. 

His was a meteoric career. In his twenty-first year, when he became 
district attorney for Oneida county, he sprang at once into prominence in 
law and politics. Eight years later he became mayor of Utica, and his 
commanding abilities as a leader began to develop, especially when in 
those exciting days just preceding the great national conflict he' went to 
Congress, and commanded attention by his wonderful powers of oratory. 
When the war was over and President Johnson became embroiled with 
Congress, Roscoe Conkling was the leader in the Senate. He was at that 
time a type of manly beauty, and an admirer thus faithfully sketched his 
appearance: "Tall, well made, with broad shoulders and compact chest 
and an erect carriage, he was always dressed with scrupulous neatness. 
His nose was large and prominent, his ej'es of a bluish-gray hue, sur- 
mounted by heavy, dark auburn eye-brows, his side whiskers curled 
closely, and his hair ran down with a sharp point into the middle of his 
broad, bold forehead, where it rose in a curl. His language was eloquent, 
and when he spoke on the floor every word was clearly enunciated, while 
slow and deliberate gestures lent effect to what he said. At times, when 
his features would light up with animation, his deep nostrils would quiver 
and lengthen into the expression of scorn, which would often lash an 
opponent into fury. His manner towards strangers was at times dictato- 
7 



50 Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 

rial, but his personal friends worshiped him, and thej" never threw off their 
allegiance." 

President Grant tendered Senator Conkling a seat on the Supreme 
Court bench, but he declined it. He repeated his declination when the 
same honor was offered him by President Arthur and confirmed by the 
Senate. The climax of his career was, perhaps, w^hen he made the memo- 
rable fight in Chicago, in 1880, for Grant. He was then in his element, 
war to the knife and the knife to the hilt, the lion of the convention. He 
held the famous "306 " as an unflinching phalanx to the last, going down 
before overwhelming numbers, with colors flying and hearts undaunted. 
He infused into his followers some of his own fiery enthusiasm, and his 
speech placing Grant in nomination was a wonderful effort of oratory. 
Throughout the desperate conflict which, on the thirty-sixth ballot, ended 
with the nomination of Garfield, the great Stalwart leader was the most 
conspicuous man in the convention among an assemblage in which there 
were so many distinguished statesmen and orators. The end of his public 
career came the following year, when Garfield broke his compact with him 
and Robertson became collector of the port of New York. 

Mr. Conkling was a steadfast friend and as consistent an enemy. There 
was not a particle of petty spite in his nature, but strong, manly, generous 
instincts that always lifted him above those who surrounded him. Albany 
may be proud of such a son, who achieved such a brilliant career. He has 
left a name second to none in the party to which he devoted his excep- 
tional abilities, and one that will be ever enshrined in the Walhalla of 
national celebrities. 

His last appearance in his native city was as pall bearer at the funeral of 
the late Daniel Manning. It was a tribute to the memory of a distin- 
guished Albanian by another eminent son of Albany, Both men had won 
esteem and fame of a national standard, on which no stain ever rested. 
Both were earnest, unselfish statesmen, inspired by noble thoughts and 
conscientious to the last degree in their public services. Each was faith- 
ful to his party under circumstances that tested loyalty to the utmost; 
each made a brilliant record at the national conventions of his party. 
They were citizens of whom Albany has good reasons to be forever proud, 
and to enshrine their names in the brightest page of its annals. 



From, the Troy Times, April 18. 

The country hears with profound sorrow that Eoscoe Conkling, 
ex-Senator of the United States, is dead. He was in the full tide of physical 
vigor and mental strength, and bade fair, when his fatal illness befell him, 
to enjoy for nuiiiy year to come active participation in the duties of his 
profession. Nature had given him a superb constitution. His habits 
were temperate, if not abstemious. He ceaselessly employed those 
general aids which experience has shown to be efficacious in promoting 
physical robustness, and found his reward in the possession of almost 
unbroken health, great strength and the ability to so command all his 
powers as to meet every professional and intellectual emergency, 



Memorial Tributes to Roscoe Conkling. 51 

Although seven years had ])assed since he retired from pul>lic life, he 
was the object of unceasing interest to the people. He had so long been 
an impressive and picturesque figure in American politics that he could 
not if he would wholly withdraw himself from general attention. Specu- 
lation was intermittent whether he would not some day return to the field 
in which he had once played so conspicuous a part and in which he had 
made his fame. His appearance, manner and utterances in court as well 
as in private were matters of almost constant comment in the press. 
These facts showed how deep an impression Mr. Conkling had made upon 
his contemporaries. 

RpscoE Conkling, departing in his prime, achieved a reputation almost 
peerless for oratorical ability and brilliant statesmanship. He was an 
indefatigable student; he read much; he worked methodically; he thor- 
ough!}^ mastered the subject under investigation. His power of memory 
was remarkable ; his capacity on the moment to recall historical facts and 
reminiscences, both political and literary, for argument and illustration, 
was a gift which afforded equipment for forensic effort that few of our 
time or of any time possessed. 

RoscoE Conkling was an impressive speaker ; he never failed to awaken 
the interest of his hearers ; he had something to say whenever he spoke, 
and that something embraced live thought, forceful logic, convincing illus- 
tration and sometimes striking argument and satire combined. His style 
of speech was felicitous, often original, always powerful. He was earnest 
in advocacy, honest in condemnation and never faltered in maintenance 
of the courage of his conviction. 

Nature had awarded him physical gifts which largely contributed to his 
great success before audiences. He was tall, and his " Apollo-like form," 
a phrase the reverse of ironical in this instance, was crowned with a head 
which filled the ideal of intellectual and physical manhood. Every move- 
ment, whether of step or gesture, represented a combination of rare grace 
and superior power. His voice in strength and flexibility met every 
requirement of the popular occasion. In delivery he was slow, forceful, 
irresistible. The tide of his oratory made his hearer think of the unagi- 
tated but mighty movement of a great river rolling toward the sea. Run- 
ning through his speeches were the lines of great principles, but never 
was there a lack of apt detail, the citation of incident which emphasizes 
and illuminates the argument. 

A notable feature of his speeches was his marvelous command of lan- 
guage. His preference was for short words, but he often wove them into 
striking and picturesque phrases, which passed into the current speech of 
the day. As a debate!', his pre-eminence could not be disputed. His 
nature was controversial. He coveted an antagonist as well as a subject; 
a provocation as much as an incitement. The masterly manner in which 
he vanquished Senator Schurz in the "French arms" controversy and 
Senator Hill and Senator Lamar on other notable occasions, revealed his 
tremendous resources in contest where " Greek meets Greek" in the tug 
of senatorial conflict. 

■ Senator Conkling's great powers as an orator were best exhibited in 
addressing popular audiences on the political issues of the hour. To hold 
thousands of people enthusiastically entertained, if not spell-bound, for 



52 Memoriai. Tributes to Koscoe Conkling. 

hours, was a common achievement with him. Said an American who had 
listened to all of our chief orators: "I have heard [mentioning several 
of them], but somehow they seem light- waisted compared with Mr. 
Conkling," To listen to one of his speeches was an event to be profitably 
and pleasantly remembered. Complete readiness for the occasion was a 
prominent characteristic of the man and the orator. He almost seemed 
to court interruption by some hostile auditor who in invariably regretted 
his audacity. 

Mr. Conklinct's oratorical triumphs were many, but perhaps the magni- 
tude of his capacity was never more conspicuously displayed than during 
the Garfleld campaign in 1880, when he spoke not only in the principal 
cities of this State but addressed meetings as far west as Ohio and Indiana. 
Each speech was distinct in character and phraseology, and his perform- 
ances reminded one of Gladstone's Midlothian tour in Scotland. 

As a legislator, Roscoe Conkling's integrity was never questioned ; as a 
friend he was heroic in championship ; as an adversary he was undis- 
guised — all knew where to find him. Tremendous blows he delivered, 
but it was his sense of duty that directed them. If he erred, the error was 
one of conviction. In political leadership he was a factor whose potency 
all conceded. 

We need not dwell upon the political differences that led to Eoscoe 
Conkling's withdrawal from a great political career. Disagreeing with 
him as to the policy of that withdrawal, the Troy Times, in common with 
the great body of the Republican party of New York State, and we may 
say of tlie whole country, conceded the rectitude of his intentions, while 
deeply and painfully regretting his retiracy, which it was sincerely hoped 
would be only temi^orary. 

As light appeared to him he could not understand how others failed to 
discern it. It was ever to him a clear light, and during the predominancy 
of his leadership it was clear to the masses of his Republican following. 

RoscoE Conkling had his infirmities, but splendid merits he possessed 
whicli led to admiration even when friendly disagreement or active antag- 
onism was interposed in opposition to his views or policy of action. An 
iron will power he had. It was never masked by hypocrisy. It asserted 
the convictions of the man witliout semblance of deception. 

RoscoE Conkling was a great political leader. But his were not the 
methods which seek a following through familiarity or sacrifice of dignity. 
He was too proud to stoop to the arts of demagogy. His recognized 
genius commanded confidence and admiration without resort to the acts 
of smaller-minded politicians. He stood aloof from trickery, and slew his 
political foes in the open field and in the face of the sun. He disdained 
victories that could be won only at the sacrifice of dignity and self-respect. 
It is one of the strongest testimonials to his real greatness that his bitter- 
est political foes freely and unhesitatingly acknowledged his unimpeached 
and unimpeachable honor. 

RoscoE Conkling made his mark as few men who have gone before 
made their impress upon the times in which they lived. He was a patriot 
statesman. During the nation's awful peril his powerful efforts were 
unsparingly, and to the utmost, exerted to sustain the country and to 
make the Union at whatever cost " one and inseparable, now and 



Memorial Tributes to Boscoe CoNKLiNa. 53 

forever." Loyal service he rendered the republic during tlie dark days. 
The lamented Lincoln sought his counsel, young man as he then was. 
He never faltered, never doubted ; the logic of events and the heroism of 
the Union army he saw from the beginning as agencies of his country's 
salvation. 

From the hour when disloyal guns were turned upon Sumpter until the 
last rebel flag was trailed in the dust no other spirit in Congress flamed 
more fiercely for a thorough prosecution of the war for the Union. His 
speeches blazed with loyalty and denunciation of treason. He supported 
all the great measures calculated to restore to the republic peace with 
honor. The amendments to the Constitution found in him an earnest and 
influential advocate. As a member of the House he was a leading factor 
of the Ways and Means Committee and the Special Keconstruction Com- 
mittee of Fifteen. Firm of purpose, far-seeing of vision and most eloquent 
in presenting his opinions, Mr. Conkling stood second to none in a body 
of men Avhose names a once-imperiled nation will hold in grateful 
remembrance. 

His work in the Senate was equally effective in promoting the bets 
interests of the people. Probably the most elaborate speech that he ever 
delivered in Congress Avas in support of the plan for settling the dispiited 
Presidential election of 1876. It lasted through portions of two days, and 
if any man's utterance was decisive of its fate it was Mr. Conkling's. 

RoscoE Conkling, with all the stubborn qualities of his nature, was a 
tender-hearted man. To friends he was deeply attached. Over their mis- 
fortunes he mourned; in their prosperity he rejoiced. He was princely 
in social companionship. He captivated with his wit; he instructed as he 
am vised with his sarcasm. As a conversationalist he was as magnetic as 
in public oratory. It was a feast to listen to his quaint and original 
analyzation of men and measures in private disquisition. Everywhere he 
•\vas a commanding power ; the might of his genius was always conspicu- 
ous whether in high debate or in social reunion. 

There was sublimity in the friendship of Roscoe Conkling for the 
lamented General Grant, and to the last the latter gratefullj^ recognized 
his personal devotion and his unselfish support. He knew the stern 
qualities of the soldier statesman ; he believed in the man with all the 
fervor of his nature, and that General Grant's re-election to the Presi- 
dency for the third term would inure to the advantage of the republic. 
How loyally and ably he labored to assure this consummation, and how 
nearly the result was approached, largely through his efforts, now consti- 
tutes an interesting and almost heroic chapter in our political history. 
But chieftain and noble advocate are now of the past, to be honored, 
however, by the memory which time will perpetuate as examples of illus- 
trious achievement, wherein the eminent dead will not cease to speak 
usefully and heroically to the living. 

In the death of Eoscoe Conkling, this commonwealth has lost an illus- 
trious son, the country a sincere patriot, the bar a brilliant advocate, and, 
we may add, the world a great man. 



54 Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 

From the Troy Observer, April 22. 

Ex-Senator Eoscoe Conkling, lawyer, statesman and patriot, died in 
New York city on Tuesday morning. One of the most brilliant men of the 
nineteenth century has joined the silent majority. Senator Conkling was 
a man of remarkable attainments. He was an able parliamentarian, 
strong in argument, brilliant in repartee and scathing in sarcasm. None 
was stronger in his friendships and any compact that he made he always 
fulfilled to the letter. Both in public and private life his integrity was 
never questioned. He was absolutely incorruptible, and the luster of his 
manly honesty stands out all the brighter when his suri'oundings are 
considered. At the time that Mr. Conkling was at the zenith of his power 
as the friend and adviser of Grant, shameless villainy pervaded the higher 
official circles in Washington, but Conkling was never smirched. All his 
acts were clean. He was a wise political leader, but he did not resort to 
trickery. He despised anything that was not manly and honorable. 
Adversaries feared him and when he opposed them everything he did was 
open and above board. Mr. Conkling made a reputation that will endure 
for all time ; nothing can sully it. Sad it is to realize that there are not 
more men of his type. The world would be a good deal better if it had 
more like him. 



From the Troy Telegram, April 19. 

On the splendor of his intellect, his marvelous attainments,- his high, 
unimpeachable, spotless character, there is no occasion at this time to 
dwell. History will accord him a place among the greatest and the best 
of Americans. His fame is secure ; the detraction of petty persecutors 
no longer occupies public attention ; his worth, his greatness, his patriot- 
ism are known to all men, and future generations will marvel that a man 
of such great ability and higli i)urpose should have been treated as he was 
by the party he so often took to brilliant victory He will be remembered 
by fenerations to come when those who so relentlessly pursued him have 
long mouldered in forgotten graves. 



From, the Poughkeepsie Evening Enterprise, April 18. 

The death of Roscoe Conkling closes one of the most consiiicuous of 
American lives, and the sad event will carry sorrow to the entire American 
people. The story of his life, his sickness and his death, is one of those 
stories that are perfectly familiar to the people. He will be remembered 
as a man of great ability and unsullied character. In all his public career 
he was a conspicuous leader in his party, his eloquence alwaj's forcing 
him to the front in every emergency that came to the Eepublican party. 
If there was any blemish in his political life it was found in his adherence 
to the spoils system ; and it was this that caused his political downfall, 
and that had caused many, even among his ardent admirers, to consider 
him indirectly responsible for the sad events following his resignation as 



Memorial Tmi5UTEs to Eoscoe Conkling. 55 

United States Senator. But even with liis desire to control the vast 
patronage that he considered as belonging to him as the leader of his 
party in tlie State, no suspicion of corruption was ever whispered against 
him, and lie always commanded the respect and confidence of the people. 
His was a life that honored himself and his country, and Romcoe 
CoNKLiNCi's name will always be classed with those of the greatest men 
that the country has ever produced. 



From the New York Herald, April 18. 

The death of Roscoe Conkling is not an incident but an event. Truly 
the fates are stern and grudge the republic her noblest sons. Grant, 
Garfleld, Tildeu, O'Conor, Logan, Manning, Washburne, Phillips, Emer- 
son, Beecher, "Waite — so many we fondly grieve to spare — and how many 
more, dear to us for their wisdom and valor, their piety, wit and learning — 
men with so much to do, as it seemed to our mere human eyes. But 
their work was done. For them no more was appointed. We turn from 
their new made graves to mourn another in Mr. Conkling, to be remem- 
bered with the most eminent of them all. 

As a political influence rather than as a political leader Mr. Conkling 
will be honored. He was not born to lead a modern Democracy. He was 
Coriolanus rather than Eienzi — a master, not a tribune. The arts of 
modern leadership— tact, compromise, recognition of the limitations and 
weakness of devoted friendship— were unknown to his haughty spirit. 
He rather led the leaders of men — the centurions, the captains of the 
fifties — who were attracted by the force of his character and followed him 
from admiration of his picturesque and splendid genius. 

The intense honesty of Mr. Conkling became often intolerance. There 
was no bending that intrepid will. His devotion to a principle or a friend- 
ship was that of Loyola and not of Talleyrand. His controversies made 
history. His quarrel with Washburne kept that gentleman out of the 
Presidency. His feud with Blaine prevented his own nomination in 187C, 
and defeated Blaine in 1881. .His difference with Hayes was uncompro- 
mising. His separation from Garfleld was cyclonic in its flerceness and 
its consequences, and he parted from Arthur at the cost of valued and 
precious friendships. Nor will history say that in these controversies Mr. 
Conkling was right and his opponents wrong. They were eminent, 
patriotic men ; pure in motive and quite as apt to be sincere as himself. 
But there was no compromise in the nature of Eoscoe Conkling. His 
friends were his friends, his enemies were his enemies. Aiming ever at 
the highest ideal of chivalry, whatever failed to reach that ideal was 
unworthy of his esteem. 

Mr. Conkling did not die too soon for his fame, but too soon for recog- 
nition. Americans had grown to be intensely proud of this superb, high- 
principled, supremely gifted statesman ; to look upon him as a model 
leader, eminent in experience, probity, eloquence. His very faults were 
looked at as an extreme expression of virtues so little seen among public 
men. In a time of surrender, incapacity, mendacity, mud, compromise 



56 Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 

and shame, the Kepublican party was turning toward the one man who 
was too proud to bend to an ignoble suggestion. Kepublicans, recalling 
the best days of their ascendancy, weary of government by mobs of 
drunken adventurers, who called themselves conventions and bought and 
sold nominations, were thinking of one who never paltered with the truth 
for power. Mr. Conkling, when he died, was becoming to his party what 
Mr. Cleveland is to the Democracy. Greater than his partj% above it in 
aspirations and in moral tone ; cast down from his old leadership in some 
mood of momentary baseness, time was swiftly bringing recognition and 
vindication. He had only to wait until the party returned to him — 
returned, bearing honors which he had won by his genius and lost by his 
integrity. 

This was not to be. He was to die — if true leaders of public opinion 
like Conklinct ever die. The palpable man whom we saw but yesterday, 
with commanding mien — stern, deep-set eyes, the brows Olympian, the 
over-whitened hair, the ruddy face eternal in youth and expression, vigor, 
genius, grace; personal beauty personified, the orator, scholar, the 
implacable opponent and tumultuous man of affairs, has gone, but the 
impalpable spirit remains. We have lost the most agressive leader in 
American politics since Clay and Webster died, thirty-six years ago. But 
lie is not dead. His life remains an incentive, an example — let us say an 
admonition. For it may be well to remember as an admonition that in 
any public career pride, intolerance and the Swift-like gift of withering 
invective may retard or prevent opportunities of lustrous service to the 
commonwealth. But even so, generations will come and go before the 
example of this extraordinary man, his eloqiienee and learning, his 
undaunted devotion to truth, his purity and courage, his uncompromising 
patriotism, his scorn of cant and deception, will be forgotten. A masterful, 
imperial soul has passed away leaving a name which Americans will not 
soon let die. 



From the New York Sun, April 19. 

The most j^icturesque, striking and original tigure of American politics 
disappears in the death of Roscoe Conkling. Alike powerful and graceful 
in person, he towered above the masses of men in the elasticitj^ of his 
talents and the peculiarities and resources of his mental constitution as 
much as he did in form and bearing. Yet his career can not be called a 
great success, and he was not a great man. He was an object of love and 
admiration to an extraordinary circle of friends, including not alone those 
who shared his opinions, but many who were utterly opposed to them. 
He was by nature a zealous partisan, and it was his inclination to doubt 
the good sense and the disinterestedness of those who were on the other 
side ; but, nevertheless, the strongest instinct of his nature was friend- 
ship, and his attachments stood the test of every trial except such as 
trenched upon his own personality. This he guarded with the swift 
jealousy of most intense selfhood, and no one could in any way impinge 
upon it and remain his friend. Then, his resentments were more lasting 
and more unchangeable than his friendships. This, in our judgment, was 



Memoeial tributes to Koscoe Conkling. 57 

the great weakness of the mau. Who can say that in his inmost heart 
Conkling did not deplore it! At any rate, the candid observer who sums 
up his liistory must deplore it for him, and "the recording angel, as he 
wrote it down, dropped a tear upon the word and blotted it out forever." 



From the New York World, April 18. 

The imperious spirit that nothing save death could bend is at last 
laid low. RoscoE Conkling is no more. The dead statesman and lawyer 
was a natural leader among men. Brilliant in intellect, dominating 
in will, intense in his convictions, eloquent in speech, the soul of honor, 
a generous friend, an open foe, nature ordained him to serve at the front 
in whatever sphere of action he was placed. Roscoe Conkling will be 
honored and remembered for two traits in his character — his intellectual 
independence and his inherent integrity. More conspicuously than almost 
any other politician of his time, he was free from any taint of demagogy 
or any form of dishonesty or insincerity. He had not only the courage of 
his convictions, but, that rarer quality among public men, the courage of 
his contempt. He hated hypocrisy, he despised duplicity, he scorned 
baseness and did not fear to show it. He would not stoop even to conquer. 
In his death law, politics and oratory lose one of their most brilliant 
chiefs, and New York State her most gifted and remarkable child of 
genius. He was the proudest, ablest and most intrepid man the State ever 
produced, and he will live in the history of both State and nation. 



From the New York Star, April 19. 

Physically, as well as intellectually, Eoscoe Conkling was a remarkable 
man. An American abroad, asked by a foreign friend to describe him, 
said of him as a celebrated Englishman once did of Tennyson, "Agamem- 
non, king of men ;" and there was that about the bearing, as well as the 
stature and features of Conkling, that seemed to mark him as one born 
to lead many in large undertakings. It has been imputed to him by his 
opponents that he failed not to realize this natural distinction, and utilized 
it to impress his friends and overawe his enemies ; but the same might be 
said with equal truth of Charles Sumner and, indeed, of the majority of 
great Americans, not excepting the Father of his Country. 

Reflection on Eoscoe Conkling's career leads to the conclusion that, 
conspicuous as were his public performances in the arena of statesman- 
ship, he exercised yet greater influence in ways that are not apparent 
through the pages of the Congressional Becord or the newspapers of the 
day. It was as the adviser and inspirer of national administrations— the 
mentor often unheeded, but always ready with frank advice— that he had 
the greatest effect upon the fortunes of the country. During the two 
administrations of Grant his voice was specially potential, and few knew 
8 



58 Memorial Tributes to Eosgoe Conkling. 

how uniformly it was raised in favor of conservative and moderate 
methods and against the concessions to cabals that brought discredit on 
the surroundings of the executive mansion. 

Loyalty in friendship and partisanship was a dominant trait in Conk- 
ling's character. What he freely gave he relied on receiving ; and, counting 
on his friends as they did on him, nothing wounded him so deeply as the 
revelation that such relations of interdependence had weakened. It 
was no doubt mainly through misconception and meddling that an 
impression of this sort grew up respecting his footing with President 
Arthur. But it is certain that the misunderstanding was never wholly 
effaced. 

It was partisanship enforced by companionship that lost to Conkling 
the greatest opportunity of his life — such a one as has seldom come to 
any American. It is beyond dispute that he was ready to declare for Tilden, 
and went to the Senate prepared to prove his case and make the speech 
that would surely have been followed by the installation of the elected 
President. But party friends dissuaded him at the last moment, convinc- 
ing him that the ends of justice might be reached by the submission of 
the dispute to an impartial ti'ibunal. It was the knowledge of Conkling's 
intended speech that delayed the declaration of the conclusion of Demo- 
cratic leadei's respecting the scheme for the electoral commission. 

As a Senator, there was a side of Conkling's work little observed by the 
press or the general public, but which drew to him many friends. No one 
was more unremittingly devoted to constituents, more exact in the per- 
formance of those kindly offices that fall in greatest number on those 
most influential, and no one gave more time to the aid, comfort and enter- 
tainment of New Yorkers who sought him personally in Washington. 
Governor Fenton, a master in the arts of conciliation, was inferior to his 
colleague in popularity with citizens of their common State ; and it was 
out of zeal in behalf of a friend to whom Fenton refused expected aid, 
that there came the open breach between them that involved such grave 
consequences in the politics of New York. 

Mr. Conkling's latter years, spent in private life in the arduous and 
brilliant practice of his profession, were the crown and glory of his life. 
The resolution that enabled him, advanced in life and with wrecked for- 
tunes, to begin a new career involving intense application, under great 
disadvantages compared with rivals whose i:)ractice had been unintcrupted, 
and to achieve a most distinguished success, revealed the indomitable 
nature of the magnificent man. Of him in the years of his prime as a 
politician, as a statesman, as a friend, many will think with respect and 
esteem. But Roscoe Conkling, rising superior to ruin, seizing almost at a 
bound the highest prizes of a difficult and (>xacting profession, ])aying on 
a point of honor a great del^t of another tov which he was holdeii by no 
legal obligation, and only in so scrupulous a mind as his b}^ any moral 
one — that grand and dutiful ligurc comniands the admiration of all true 
hearts. 



Memorial Tributes to Koscoe Conkling. 59 

From the New York Times, April 20. 

The numerous expressions of sorrow over the deatli of Mr. Conkling, 
and the messages of sympathy that have been sent to his family by 
various public bodies show how large a place he filled, even since his 
retirement, in the minds of men active in politics. It is evident that from 
his labors, his achievements, and his failures in the unelective but clearly 
designated oi'Qce of a party leader, Mr. Conkling will be most distinctly 
remembei'ed, as he was most faithfully followed and most bitterly opposed. 
From a time shortly after the close of the war, during both terms of 
General Grant's presidency, he seized and wielded a power that has never 
been surpassed, and has liardly been etiualed even by that of the politician 
who led the Republicans to their first signal defeat. Considering the 
weighty and exciting nature of the issues of that time, the volume and 
momentum of party feeling, the rapid progress of great events, the 
unprecedented development of the national forces, Mr. Conkling's posi- 
tion was one of great distinction and of great influence. For some twelve 
years his was the deciding voice in party affairs, and in more than one 
grave crisis, since his party was in unquestioned and apparently impreg- 
nable supremacy, his voice was decisive also in national affairs. To have 
gained such a position, to have wielded its powers with so firm and 
masterful a hand, to have controlled elements so complex, often so con- 
flicting, and not seldom dangerous, was evidence of very rare, though not 
necessarily of the highest gifts of nature, and of training and self-direc- 
tion of extremely uncommon kind, and still more uncommon degree. No 
one who in these years had to deal with Mr. Conkling either as coadjutor, 
follower, or opponent could fail to recognize his extraordinary energy, the 
originality and individual force of his character, the penetration (within 
its limits) of his judgment of men, and the solidity of a mind that to 
remoter observers had a brilliancy suggesting want of depth. He was 
essentially in party politics a great commander, with some of the qualities 
of a great soldier, and some more unusual even than these. 

There is to be noted in the tributes to Mr. Conkling a tendency to ignore 
services of quite a different order from the merely political, which he 
rendered in the earlier part of his career, and which, though few who 
admired him most and will most regret his death as they did his forced 
withdrawal from public life will now recall, were nevertheless of real 
value. When Mr. .Conkling was in the House of Representatives, and 
relatively a young man, he contributed substantially to the formulating of 
the policy of the Republican party as to the then overwhelming difficulty 
of slavery in a manner that made that party the victorious champion of 
liberty without breaking with the Constitution ; with, on the contrary, the 
best and most efficient loyalty to the Constitution. That was simply a 
priceless benefit for the nation, and no one whose hand was potent in 
secui'ing it sliould be denied the meed of respect and gratitude. Again, 
when the question of finance first became a burning one, and men's minds 
were half crazed with the urgency of the nation's necessities, and blindly 
impatient with all but the apparently directest methods of satisfying 
them, Mr. Conkling saw clearly and firmly, and vigorously uoheld the 
duty and the wisdom of sound and honest finance. He and those who 
labored with him did not succeed in holding the government to the hard 



fiO Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conklino. 

and upright path of payments in real money, but tliey deserve to be 
remembered for their manly effort. And Mr. Conklixg in the trying and 
confused times that followed, never yielded to the temptation of compro- 
mise on the financial issue. Some of the finest, though not the best- 
remembered, pages of the record of his speeches fairly flame with the 
indignant and scornful eloquence wuth which he pursued and denounced 
the fallacies of the inflation theorists and politicians. 

But, after all, it was not to these services that Mr. Conkling owed the 
most of his fame or of his power. It was to his achievements as a party 
leader, and these it must be acknowledged, were not on a high level, 
Doubtless he wielded much influence by his remarkable oratory, which, 
though not of a sort that will live in the history of the parliamentary 
bodies of which he was a member, and generally the first member, was 
very effective in controlling the minds of men, both in debate and on the 
platform. But his chief source of power was his acute judgment of men 
of a certain grade, his skill in playing upon their greed, their ambition, 
their partisan feeling, not infrequently their corrupt desires. When he 
was the greatest as a leader, his party was hardly the means to an end ; 
its success was an end in itself, and he was untiring, powerful, skillful, 
and unscrupulous in the pursuit of success. The chief basis of his 
management — not the sole basis, but indispensable — was the spoils of 
office. He looked on the civil service as the staff of the party ; its appoint- 
ments and emoluments, not always legitimate, he used to reward and 
secure partisan and personal fidelity and work. He had not the slightest 
temptation to enrich himself, and he put aside the highest honors 
apparently without a pang of regret ; but he did not hesitate to use 
cupidity and the love of place in others or to exact returns from those he 
gratified that he would have scorned to yield to any one. He despised 
hypocrisy, and he was ready to believe that devotion to moral pui'poses 
that he did not himself entertain was necessarily hypocritical. He had 
little sympathy with the nobler ideals of public life, and still less with 
those who pursued them. Though he held his own honor and integrity as 
priceless, he was wont to think that ail other men laad their price, and 
resistance to his plans or policy seemed to him only their way of extorting 
that price or trying to avenge themselves for their failure to obtain it. In 
his career in public life, and especially in the later and most brilliant and 
influential period of his career, he was worse than indifferent to the grow- 
ing evils that surrounded him. He not only made no effort to reform 
them — he opposed their reform, and did more than any one man to 
sustain, perpetuate, and extend them. 

Perhaps a fairly just estimate of Mr. Coxklixg's public character is that 
it was that of an aristocratic leader in a democratic political society. He 
had the virtues of his defects — a haughty self-respect, delight in the best 
in conduct and belongings that concerned his own personality, the gift of 
command and contempt for any of the sordid or petty rewards of com- 
mand, and a proud fidelity to his own self-imposed obligations and 
chivalric devotion to any cause or anj' person that he had honored with 
his affection ; but he had slight sympathy with the better sentiment of the 
great body of his countrymen, slight regard for their higher interests, and 
scarcely any conception of the mighty moral forces working slowly yet 
invincibly for their develoi)]nent toward a nobler type of citizenship. 



Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 61 

From the New York Tribune, April 18. 

After a long and gallant struggle which has commanded the full-hearted 
sympathy of all, Roscoe Conkling has passed away. A born fighter, he 
brought to the supremo contest preceding the inevitable hour the strength 
of will and of endurance which were of the essence of his robust personality. 
His countrymen, reading the daily bulletins from his sick chamber, have 
fervently hoped that the strong man would come off conqueror; that he 
would be restored to health and usefulness and his honored place in the 
community. In the old days when he was so interesting and potent a factor 
in our public life he made, as ultra men ai'e sure to do, a good many stout 
opponents. And nevertheless such was the universal recognition of his 
essential manliness and probity that he went out of life leaving only 
mourning friends behind him. 

" I do not know how to belong to a pax'ty a little," remarked Roscoe 
Conkling on a notable occasion. His friends — and few men insi:)ired 
more devoted ones — declared that the words were singularly accurate, 
that they fui'nished the keynote to his masterful character, and explained 
whatever of success he achieved as a public man and a party leader. His 
critics, on the other hand, argued that he understood perfectly how to 
belong to a party a little when the party jjolicy was not his own policy. 
There will be no disposition in any quarter to revive the discussion. The 
grief occasioned by the sudden death of so prominent and forceful a figure 
is deep and sincere. His fellow-countrymen, whatever the sharp differ- 
ences of the past, turn with something very like affectionate remembrance 
to the contemplation of the qualities that ennobled him and to his many 
good and faithful services. Eoscoe Conkling possessed abilities of the 
first order. He was a born leader of men. He left in our politics many 
demonstrations of his power. It was said of Herbert Spencer that his 
"personal equation " was very large. The words fit Mr. Conkling per- 
fectly. When Charles Sumner was asked to consider the other side of the 
slavery question he burst out, "Sir, there isn't any other side." Mr. 
Conkling had the same inability to put himself in the place of those who 
failed to see eye to eye with himself. 

Mr. Conkling's public career covered a momentous period in our 
history — the war and reconstruction era. He bore his part well in the 
great work of shaping legislation which supplemented the heroic achieve- 
ments of the Union soldiers. He was on the side of emancipation, of 
unsullied national credit, of suffrage for the black man, of reconstruction 
in the interest of patriotism, of a pure and well-guarded ballot-box. It is 
these things, coupled with personal integrity and a certain chivalric con- 
stancy in his friendships that are remembered to his praise, and make the 
State proud of havinc: him on the roll of her sons. There were other 
things — but the spirit of factionalism no longer animates the Republican 
party, and out of its unity it foi-gets that there ever was division. Peace 
to his ashes! A great Republican has fallen, a man among men has 
passed on. 



02 Memorial Tributes to Roscoe Conkling. 

From the Brooklyn Standard-Union, April 19. 

The death of Eoscoe Conkling leaves a void in the community of which 
he formed a distinguislied unit, rather than in the party to the building 
up of which so much of his life was given ; for when he voluntarily retired 
from politics during Garfield's administration, he ceased to be a factor 
thonnn, and devoted his great talents to the acquisition of a competency 
for his family. In this pursuit, he was probably aided by the reputation 
he had won as a leader in that great party which never confounds leader- 
ship with bossism, but was stricken down in the very pride of Ins strength 
and on the pathway to a success such as few men are able to achieve. 
That much can be seen from what is generally known, and it will give rise 
to the feeling which animates the breast of him who finds a strong tree 
riven by the blast, or laid low by the lightning. One thinks instinctively 
of the woi'k that was appai'ently still b<'fore a man of Conkling 's talents 
and imperious will, and the symj^yathj^ that rises on such an occasion goes 
out to the widow and family who, however well provided, must feel them- 
selves left destitute by the loss of the one on whom they were accustomed 
to lean. 



From the Brooklyn Times, April 18. 

KosooE Conkling is dead. After a heroic struggle that won for him the 
sympathy of the whole people, the iron frame that confined the spirit of 
tlie great Senator has broken down and the place that has known him will 
know him no more forever. 

In many respects Eoscoe Conkling was a great man, one of the greatest 
that the Empire State has produced. He was not a great statesman : he 
was a great politician, a born Iccider of men. Profound knowledge of the 
drifts and tendencies of social growth and development, clear discernment 
of the history of the past, keen insight intoJ;he hidden currents of the 
present, wise prescience of the future — these, with strong convictions and 
unfaltering courage, are what make a statesman and these Mr. Conkling 
lacked. But as a party leader he had no superior. He had the gift of 
choosing able lieutenants and he was able to infuse among his followers 
an intensity of personal devotion that bound them to him through good 
report and evil report, And, through all the long campaigns and hot 
encounters in which he fought he bore himself so proudly and so bravely 
as to win and hold the respect even of those who were his bitterest enemies 
in the political arena. 

Of Eoscoe Conkling it may be said that "even his failings leaned to 
virtue's side." The hot, imperious temper, the exaggerated egotism that 
were the fatal defects of his character were l)ut the extreme developments 
of the impulsive daring that led him to the front in every fight and of tlie 
lofty self-respect that kept his name and his honor unsullied in a path 
beset by temptations. In this latter respect Mr. Conkling has not always 
received, even from his warmest admirers and eulogists, the full meed of 
credit he deserved. The position which he assumed early during the first 
term of President Grant, as the special champion and representative of 
the admiui-stration in the Senate, and the supreme disposer of patronage 



Memorial Tributes to Koscoe Conkling. 63 

foi' the State of New York, necessarily attracted to him all the mercenary 
elements in State politics, all the politicians who were in politics "for 
what they could make." These did not, indeed, make up the bulk of 
Mr. Conkling's personal following, for a large majority of those who came 
to be known as the Stalwart faction were men as honest, as pure and as 
loyal as could be found in the ranks of the party, but it is indisputable 
that among Mr. Conklinu's henchmen and supporters during his time of 
power there was a large prepondei'ance of this class and the fact that he 
kept his own name untainted by suspicion amid such associations must bo 
recorded to his eternal credit. Had he been less proud, less compromising 
in his assertion of his personal dignity, this could hardly have been 
possible. 

EoscoE Conkling has been out of politics, absolutely, for nearly seven 
3'ears, and his death will make no ripple on the political current. But he 
will be mourned as sincerely by those who stood against him since the 
days when he and Fenton fought for supremacy in New York as by those 
who were his most strenuous supporters. 



From the Rome Sentinel, April 18. 

The death of Roscoe Conkling must be regarded as a national calamity. 
Although for some years retired from the arena of active politics, he was 
yet in the prime of vigorous manhood, and it is undoubtedly a fact that 
the rank and file of his friends and admirers confidently believed that they 
would one day see him again in public life to round out a political career 
of unsurpassed brilliance, cut short for the time, it was believed, by unfor- 
tunate dissensions in the Republican party. A large section of the 
Republican party in this State still regarded him as its leader. He 
towered head and shoulders above most of the men of his own party who 
fought him, and who in the end, through a rare combination of circum- 
stances, compassed his political ruin. At the close of a political career in 
many respects unparalleled in the history of our country, during which he 
held in his grasp power such as seldom falls to Americans, he retired to 
private life with his skirts undettled by the slightest scandal, and with an 
empty purse. For these virtues he was admired by those whose political 
opinions differed widely from his uwn. 



From the Utica Observer, April 18. 
The dearest friends of Roscoe Conkling wished that he could live, if it 
were only to learn what the world thought of hinu They did not desire to 
have him continue to suffer inexpressible physical agony, when once it 
was determined that his strong constitution was surely breaking down 
under the tremendous pressure of an insidious disease. It was the will of 
Pi'ovidence that Conkling should die, and die before he ascertained how 
much the people loved and admired him. If he could have known what 



64 Memorial Teibutes to Roscoe Conkling. 

a keen and compassionate interest was felt in every day, liour and minute 
of his suffering, it miglit have lightened the last moments of his life. 

Oneida county loved Eoscoe Conklikg even when it most seemed to hate 
him. There was a time when his towering individuality overshadowed 
every other personality within this good shire, except that of his brother- 
in-law, Horatio Seymour, and when he appeared to dominate the county, 
to hold it within the palm of his hand, to toss recklessly aside men who 
combated his purposes or opposed his methods — when, in fine, Conkling's 
will was law in the Republican party in this vicinity. That was years ago. 
We all lived to see, and he lived to see, a new era when the Republican 
Lilliputians triumphed over this proud and great citizen, and by massing 
against him forced him into private life. But the period never arrived 
when Oneida county was not his in heart and sympathy, or when its people 
did not hear the mention of his name with pride and reverence. 

It may be said, in passing, that, while Conkling was one of the fiercest 
and most unsparing assailants of the Democratic party, many of his most 
profound admirers were Oneida county Democrats. Throughout all the 
days of his political life, Conkling displayed in his campaigns a marvelous 
gift of satire and irony, backed by genuine eloquence and the power to 
arouse the emotions of an audience. These he directed against the 
Democracy without mercy or fear. As a Republican campaign orator, he 
was the most dangerous man of his time so far as the Democratic party 
was concerned. Yet it is a wonderful and significant tribute to the 
peculiar quality of his personal and intellectual strength that the very 
party voters whom he unsparingly condemned, through the agency of 
their political devotion, grew to be his most sincere admirers and his 
warmest defenders. It has often been a remark in this neighborhood 
that if the votes of the Democrats of Utica could make Conkling Presi- 
dent, he would have attained that distinction. It has likewise been an 
(expressed opinion hereabouts that many Republicans would vote against 
him, notwithstanding local pride would influence them in his favor. Why 
it was tluit so many Democrats respected and so many Republicans 
detested him is a question difficult to answer. It suggests that his career 
was so stormy and so uncompromising in the self-assertiveuess of the 
man who pursued it that he must have won sympathy from without his 
party lines while arousing jealousy, sullen disobedience and shameful 
ingratitude within. 

We have hinted at the mingled sentiments which the men of Oneida 
county entertained towards Roscoe Conkling. Going into the larger, the 
illimitable field of national politics, we see him still making enemies in 
his own party and gaining devoted friends in the ranks of the opposition. 
While still a young man, Blaine, who was of about the same age, sub- 
jected him to an assault in the House of Representatives which was 
memorable for its cutting sarcasm, and which, while it created the embryo 
of Blaine's personal following, also sowed the seeds of a dislike which 
afterwards led to Blaine's political ruin. These two men never could 
agree. Blaine was sufficiently intellectual to be not afraid to cross 
swords with CoNKLiN(i, and Conkling was sufficiently penetrative and 
self-respecing to read Blaine through and through and to refuse to 
have anything to do with the man from Maine. There could be no truce, 



Memorial Tributes to Koscoe Conkling. 65 

and there had to be war. The ((iiarrel between this intellectual pair may 
not have, in itself, effected the defeat of the Republican party, but it cer- 
tainly stirred up sentiments and emotions that eventually enervated 
Republicanism, and cleared the road for the return of the Democratic 
party to power. Later on, the breacli between the factions widened, when 
Governor Fenton went to the Senate and saw his young colleague, by dint 
of superior integrity and straightforwardness, obtain the recognition 
and confidence of General Grant. An impression has prevailed that 
Conkling's influence with Grant was of his own deliberate seeking, but the 
contrary is true. General Grant admired Conkling for sterling qualities 
that the young Senator possessed and manifested during a time when 
duplicity, dishonesty and cheap cunning were the rule and not the excep- 
tion in public life. Throughout the eight years of Grant's administration 
Conkling never ceased to be his confidante and adviser. On his side. 
Senator Conkling was attracted to the sublimely simple and rugged char- 
acter of Grant. 

There came a time, however, when the political influence of Conkling 
reached its ebb, not through any fault of his own, but through the 
increased strength of his enemies. We believe that from the first 
Conkling despised the hypocrite and arch-fraud, Rutherford B. Hayes. 
"We believe that Conkling always regarded Tilden as the rightful claim- 
ant to the presidential chair, and that nothing but his intense loyalty to 
the Republican party deterred him from saying so. At any rate, he used 
his power in the Senate to show up the cant and Pharisaism of the Hayes 
administration, and he succeeded in his object. When he attacked 
George William Curtis in the Rochester convention in the fall of 1877, he 
was employing a convenient target wherewith to prove the steadiness of 
his aim and the inflexibility of his purpose, the issue being raised between 
him and the Ha3'es administration. To show how dreadful was Conkling's 
factional antagonism, we need only recall the fact that Hayes was rejected 
by his party with almost complete unanimity at the end of his first term. 

Elsewhere we tell the story of Roscoe Conkling's life and labor. To 
estimate his character with reasonable accuracy is a far more difficult 
task. The sweeping eloquence, the unbending rectitude, the political 
courage, the immense self-reliance — all these are the measure of a man 
of whose memory Oneida county will not cease to be justly proud. This 
community has supplied some heroic figures to the country, but none of 
them stands out in more majestic and imposing relief than that of Roscoe 
Conkling. With the impetuosity and conspicuous gallantry of a Marshal 
Ney did he flash his trusty sword in the political contests of a generation. 
As political opponents, we can testify to the strength and directness of his 
blows, and to the straightforwardness of his methods. He was incapable 
of stooping to a disgraceful political performance. He preserved his 
honor unblemished throughout the fierce temptations of a long Congres- 
sional career, winning applause from friends and foes alike, by his high- 
minded scorn of the corrupt and crooked tactics and selfishness of many 
of his contemporaries. Of Conkling it may be truly said that in political 
life he was sans peur et sans reproche. 

The circumstances of his death are unutterably sad. Nature had lav- 
ished her gifts upon him, and he seemed to have been granted a long pro- 
9 



66 Memorial Tributes to Koscoe Conkling. 

tracted lease of life. The storm of politics had passed over his head, and 
the sun of contentment, and well-earned private prosperity was shining 
serenely upon him. To a friend, he said the other day : " I am a happy 
man. Some may not believe me, but I know you will, when I say that I 
have at last secured peace and happiness." Alas, how soon, and with 
what cruel processes was the period of his earthly joy to be curtailed! 
What characteristic persistence and resolution he wrestled with death, and 
he only succumbed when his frame had been wasted, his spirit broken, 
and his strength fatally sapped. If anything were needed to fill the minds 
of our people with intense sorrow over his lo.ss, it is found in the pitiful 
manner of his taking off. 

It is almost impossible to realize that this strong, proud and brilliant 
personality must soon rest within the peaceful retreats of Forest Hill Cem- 
etery ; that the man who last left us in the full vigor of self-conscious 
strength is returned to us wasted, shattered, lifeless ; that the manly stride 
will never again be seen upon the streets of the city that he loved ; that his 
sonorous voice will nevermore stir on to the charge a legion of his party 
followers. We can not express in fitting words the degree of sorrow this 
reflection must occasion. Utica will fondly cherish and guard the grave 
of its beloved son. "After life's fitful fever," may he sleep well within 
the sacred precincts of God's-acre. History will preserve his name, but 
in this community, his fellow-townsmen will never cease to consider it as 
its special possession, and will transfer it with grateful pride to posterity. 



From the TJtica Morning Herald, April 18. 

The country of all factions and all parties will hear with the keenest 
regret that Roscoe Conklixo is dead. His illness began on March 12, 
from exposure to the severe storm, in going from his office in Wall street 

to his residence. 

****** 

His career and character have been the theme of bitter controversy. 
Over his open grave, those who stood most squarely opposed to him, will 
remember the obligations of magnanimity, will exercise the privileges of 
humanity, and, tirst of all, will pay due tribute to a leader of men, who 

impressed himself for years upon the politics of the rei)ublic. 

* * * * * * 

Utica and central New York took a large degree of pride in Senator 
Conkling. In spite of partisan and factional warfare, his distinction was 
regarded as a possession in which the community had a share. So it was 
that when in the summer of 1877, his health led him to seek recovery 
abroad, on his return, August 17, a public reception was accorded to him 
by the citizens generally. A committee met him on the train which was 
bearing him homeward, and a procession of military and civic organiza- 
tions formed an escort through tlie streets to his residence, while deco- 
rations were displayed from residences and business places. Tlie address 
of welcome was pronounced by Senator Kernan, professionally and politi- 
Cctlly the frequent rival of the guest, and he speaking for neighbors and 



Memorial Tributes to Boscoe Conkling. 67 

friends of all parties, testified their respect and regard, and bade him 
welcome home. The response of Senator Conkling was felicitous and 
graceful. 

Senator Conkling was always a busy man, and he gave nights as well 
as days to his labors. But he enjoyed the society of his friends, and 
especially while Senator in Washington, his dinners were frequent and 
his hospitality lavish. He appeared well as a host, and he was a favorite 
guest wherever men congregated. Often these social occasions were 
semi-political conferences. Whether they were so or not, Mr. Conkling's 
brilliant conversation, his unrestrained humor, and his rich fund of anec- 
dote, were invited and enjoyed. He preferred such events, to the miscel- 
laneous and crowded receptions of the congressional season. When talk 
was free, the acquaintance of Mr. Conkling with rare old English authors 
found expression, and he showed how a raconteur in private, may be an 
orator in public. 

His verbal memory was phenomenal. He could recite long poems and 
passages from the writers in which he delighted, and he recalled readily 
incidents or narrations in the career of eminent personages within his 
acquaintance, or those once heard or read. 

Those with whom he came in conflict, in debate in the Senate, were 
often his intimates in social life, and among his warmest friends every- 
where, were Democrats of the most pronounced stripe. 

****** 

When Senator Conkling visited Utica, his loyal friends assembled at his 
residence, July 11, 1882, in large numbers, and gave him a serenade. 
F. G. Fincke delivered an address expressing the confidence, the regard 
and affection of neighbors and townsfolk, and in the course of his response, 
Senator Conkling said : 

"Twenty-two years ago Oneida county trusted to me the honor of repre- 
senting her in the councils of the nation. For years afterwards some 
humble part fell to me in public and political affairs. In any of these 
years had this visit been paid, had it been explained in words so eloquent 
and so cordial as those we have heard, still it would have signified but 
little, personally. It would have been rather the expression of political or 
party sentiment. Now you come with greeting to one wholly unconnected 
with public or official transactions. You come with a warm welcome to a 
private citizen, having no claim on your regard, except his warm and 
abiding attachment to your interests and your homes, except his attach- 
ment to our beautiful city and to the neighbors and friends to whom for 
long, long years he has owed so much. Under these circumstances you 
will let me believe without other thought, that your presence here means 
the personal kindness of valued neighbors and valued friends. It could 
mean nothing which would be prized so much ;' nothing which could be 
held in memory so long and so pleasantly." 

On retiring from the Senate, Mr. Conkling at once devoted himself to 
legal practice in New York city, where he was promptly retained in many 
of the most important cases, and where it is reported his fees were in the 
aggregate among the largest known to the profession there, while his 
position was with the leaders of the bar. As a professional matter he was 
counsel for the committee of the State Senate which investigated the 



68 Memorial Tributes to Boscoe Conklino. 

Broadway surface railroad, and led to the repeal of the charter of that 
corporation and to the trial of Jacob Sharp. 

This is not an occasion on which it is fitting to discuss the merits of con- 
troversies which beyond question threw the national administration into 
the hands of the Democrats, and cost the Republicans of this State years 
of disaster and exclusion from power. The simple record is enough to 
afford the measure of Mr. Conkltng's control and mastery, as well as his 
indomitable will and tremendous personality. With the election of his 
successor his active participation in politics ceased, for although Mr. Arthur, 
who acceded to the presidency on the death of President Garfield, had 
always been his ally and friend, the ex-Senator held aloof from his admin- 
istration, and thi'ough friends opposed his nomination for the succession 

in 1884. 

****** 

Whatever rivalries, whatever antagonisms, whatever differences may 
have existed during his lifetime, make truce over the grave of one of the 
most notable figures in American politics, a lawyer who refused to be 
Chief Justice, an orator who challenged comparison only with the most 
distinguished, a leader who impressed himself on his party which gave him 
all its honors except the highest, and for that his friends pressed him 
vigorously, and whose departure from public life will remain as a striking 
political drama. 



From the Syracuse Herald, April 18. 

EoscoE CoNKLiNG was a man who has left behind him an honest record. 
He was not to be counted among the foremost statesmen of America. He 
was by nature a leader, and he asserted and maintained his position 
of leadership among the Republicans of this State during the j'cars of his 
active participation in politics. In Congress he was not an originator of 
great measures, and left no marked impression upon the legislation of his 
country ; but he was keenly alive to the issues of the day, and controlled 
the destinies of his party in a marked degree. He was merciless in the 
exercise of his great j^ower of sai'casm, yet he was an honest and straight- 
forward opponent. He never condescended to indirect methods to accom- 
plish his ends. His resignation from the Federal Senate in 1881, was a 
fearless act, and he took the step regardless of the consequences. His 
personal following in politics was large and devoted. He remembered 
his friends, and openly fought his enemies. Perhaps the most complete 
success of Mr. Conkling's life followed his retirement from politics. He 
then resumed the practice of the law, and in New York city almost at once 
assumed a rank among the most distinguished members of the l)ar. In 
the law he manifested the same qualities tliat distinguished his political 
career. His keen intelligence, self-possession in emergencies and fearless- 
ness in asserting the rights of his clients made him a lawyer whose services 
were almost invaluable. 

Deep regret and sorrow have followed the announcement that this 
gifted and honest man has been taken from life when at the zenith of 
his powers. 



Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe CoNKLiNa. 69 

From the Rochester Post-Express, April 18, 

Among the Eochesterians who had a personal acquaintance with RoscoE 
CoNKLiNG none knew him better perhaps, both in his private and public 
career, than did ex-Congressman John Van Voorhis. Mr. Van Voorhis 
gave the following reminiscences of the statesman to a Post-Express 
reporter tliis morning: "I tirst met Mr. Conklino when he was in the 
House of Representatives. It was almost at the beginning of his public 
career. At that time he was a great friend of Thad. Stevens. The latter, 
Mr. Conklinct and Mr. Blaine were in Congress together and were the 
three leading figures in the house. I heard Conkling frequently in debate 
when I happened to be in "Washington during the thirty-sixth, thirty- 
seventh and thirty-ninth Congresses, and heard him subsequently many 
times in the Senate. In fact I was present during some of his greatest 
efforts in that body. As an orator his power was supreme. I heard him 
frequently argue causes in the United States Supreme Court, and no lawyer 
within the range of my acquaintance ever argued cases in that court with 
more thoroughness and success or commanded to a greater degree the 
attention and respect of the judges. He was yery bold in his speeches and 
had wonderful tact in sentence making. I remember hearing him argue a 
case in which a Jew from Alabama was plaintiff and Alexander T. Stewart, 
of New York, was defendant. The Jew had gone from New York to 
Alabama and Stewart had attempted to collect a debt from him in the 
latter State. Stewart failed in this and the Jew sued him for malicious 
prosecution and obtained a verdict of $20,000 in the Alabama courts. 
The verdict showed on its face great prejudice against Stewart on the part 
of the Alabama judges. After a very able and eloquent argument, Conkling 
closed by asking the court to reverse this agrarian verdict against this 
Merchant of Venice in favor of a Wandering Jew! I heard Conkling in 
the Republican convention of 1871, when the chief question was whether 
the scheme for the reorganization of the Republican party of the State of 
New York, which had been proposed by a committee appointed at a 
previous State convention, should be adopted. Thei^e was much discus- 
sion ; the friends of Grant on the one side favoring reorganization, the 
opponents of Grant on the other side opposing the reorganization as it 
was supposed to be in his interest. Conkling sat still and mute in the 
convention until, at the end of a long debate, Genei'al Woodford, chairman 
of the convention, was about to put the question. Mr. Conkling then 
sprang to his feet with the words, ' Not yet the question, Mr. President.' 
He then made an argument of ten or fifteen minutes in length in favor of 
adopting the reorganization plan, in the course of which he said : ' Does 
any man in this convention deny the influence of William M. Tweed over 
the present Republican organization in the city of New York? If any man 
here has the boldness to deny it, I pause to give him an opportunity to 
make such a denial.' Almost immediately the words, 'I deny it,' came 
from a dozen throats in a dozen different parts of the room. It seemed 
for the moment as if Conkling was beaten, but he had only laid a trap for 
his opponents, and he replied : 'Gentlemen, I thank you for your denial. 
It is the very logic of your position. You are compelled to deny it, but 
when you deny it the whole State of Ncav York knows that you deny that 
which is true.' At the close of Mr. Conkling's speech there was no doubt 



70 Memorial Tributes to Roscoe Conkling. 

as to what the vote of the convention would be, although before it the 
opponents of Grant seemed largely to predominate." 

"I had a conversation once," continued Mr. Van Voorhis, "with 
General Simon Cameron, who told me that he had heard Webster and 
Clay many times in the Senate of the United States, and that neither of 
them equaled Conkling as a forensic orator; that while Clay and Webster 
livetl in the days of slow coaches and slow mails and had abundant time 
to revise their speeches before they reached the jiress and the people, Mr. 
Conkling's speeches were reported by telegraph without opportunity for 
revision, and he added that Mr. Conkling's speeches in ordinary debate, 
upon questions in which he could not have made preparation, were models 
of classic eloquence. 

"I met Mr. Conkling personally many times," continued Mr. Van Voor- 
his, "and always found him to be very easy to approach, public opinion 
to the contrary notwithstanding. When he was not particularly bu.sy, he 
was a very agreeable conversationalist. During the campaign of 1884 Mr. 
Conkling came to Rochester to speak at the great meeting held in the 
pavilion a little off of Main street. He was expected to arrive on the morn- 
ing of the meeting, and great preparations were made by the clubs to 
receive him. Conkling eluded the brass bands, the procession, etc., by 
slipping into the Osborn house with his carpet bag the night before. Gen- 
eral Wood, of Geneseo, and myself happened to be present and walked up 
with him to supper. The supper, so far as Conkling was concerned, con- 
sisted of a bowl of bread and milk, but we remained at the table a full 
hour listening to his conversation. After a time the talk turned upon 
literary subjects. In reply to a remark with reference to a quotation used 
by him, and its authorship, he said that it was difficult to tell who wrote 
anything; that Webster's famous sentence beginning 'That power whose 
morning drum beat,' did not originate with Webster, but had been written 
100 years before Webster was born by two men not contemporary with 
each other. The conversation turned upon Shakespeare, and General 
Wood asked Mr. Conkling if the latter thought that Hamlet was in.sane, 
Mr. Conkling said : ' What do you ask that for? Who cares whether 
Hamlet was insane ornotV Maud S. can make a mile in two minutes ten 
and one-half seconds, and some fool comes along and wants to know 
whether she ever kicked any one. I maintain that if Maud S. can trot a 
mile in two minutes ten and one-half seconds, she has a perfect right to 
kick anybody she wants to who gets within range of her heels.' 

"As a speaker, Mr. Conkling was deliberate. He spoke with great ease 
and slowness, and the effectiveness of his argument lay in that. It made 
his deliveiy very impressive. He could rise to the occasion and speak 
with more rapidity when necessary, but he never gave the impression that 
he said anything in haste, or otherwise than with deliberate thought. The 
coolness of his irony and sarcasm was what made both so effective. There 
was no oddity about Conklinct. In public and in private intercourse with 
men he was a perfect gentlenum. He treated alike with extreme courtesy 
men of the highest station, and the least influential num who happened to 
be in his presence. He was a iium who relied upon his own judgment. At 
times he was arbitrary, but resistance only showed in the end tluit he was 
right. He knew he was right, and his Arm conviction of this made him 



Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 71 

seem arbitrary. He was so much abler tlian the men around him that it 
was generally enough for them to know what his views were to aecede to 
tliem, and it was from this custom that the popular charge that he was 
arbitrary came to be somewhat exaggerated." 

Hemy F. Huntington was a personal acquaintance of Mr. Conkling. 
He said to a reporter this morning, " I believe him to have been the high- 
est type of a politician, combining more admirable qualities as man and 
statesman than any other public man since Lincoln. In his intercourse 
with me I always found him entertaining, pleasing and affable. There is 
a story I have told about him a hundred times relative to a remark he 
once made in mj' presence. He said, ' Nothing appeals to a man's vanity 
so much as to have his physician say that he is over-worked and must 
make a trip to Europe. It makes him feel good way through.' As he said 
' way through,' Mr. Conkling rubbed his hands over his stomach with an 
expression that was iiTcsistibly funny." 

A gentleman who knew Mr. Conkling well said: "Roscoe Conkling 
was a natural leader of men. His followers were not slaves nor did they 
follow him at the sacriflce of their manhood, as his enemies were wont to 
declare. He despised double dealing and hypocrisy. His partisanship 
was aggressive but fixed ui)on the highest plane in what he believed best 
for his country and his party. In the whole course of his successful lead- 
ership no element of trickery or chicanery found a place. His victories 
were won by superior skill and by the aid of loyal supporters and in a fair 
contest. He could not overlook an injury, and would spurn a proffered 
favor from one who had wronged him. Upon one occasion he was told 
that a prominent journalist, who had unfairly assailed him, had recently 
written kindly of him. He said : ' What have I done that such as these 
should jiraise me ?' His fund of anecdote and quotation was unsurpassed. 
In social life he was most genial. To every one whom he esteemed worthy 
to be called a friend, he was most considerate. Loyalty to his party and 
its principles he accounted to be the greatest evidence of friendship, and 
to all such, no matter how humble, he stood true. To the innumerable 
falsehoods issued by envious rivals he was silent in public, his terrible 
invective against George William Curtis in the convention held in 
this city in 1877 being aluK^st the only exception". While for several 
years he had withdrawn from active interest in politics, it was well known 
to- those intimate with him that the success of the party was his great 
desire. But he had determined by no act of his to thrust himself into 
notice, believing that when the people wanted him, anywhere or in any 
way, they would find means to say so. To such a call there is no question 
that he would have quickly responded." 



From the Buffalo Express, April 19, 

RoscoK Conkling's greatness is the theme of to-day's news, as his death 
was of yesterday's. There is more than formal respect in the host of resolu- 
tions and individual expressions reported in our local and telegraph 
columns this morning. As we said yesterday, "He left not an enemy." 



72 Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 

The mantle of history was about his political career even before he died. 
Remembrance of him had ceased to be of an active force, antagonizing 
any of the living. His old antagonists had had time to remember his 
lovable qualities. The rising generation knew him only as they knew the 
heroes of the American Pantheon, though in the meantime he was estab- 
lishing another claim on immortality. 

It is possible for but few men to create two careers for themselves, how- 
ever small. RosooE CoxKLiNG turned the current of his own political fame 
awry at its flood, and, setting himself steadfastly at work, made almost as 
great a reputation as a forensic advocate. He did not "sulk in his tents," 
as some said. He resolutely turned his back on one battle to enter uj^on 
another field of endeavor. 

Still, it is his work as statesman and politician that fills the thoughts of 
men to-day. How he overthrew Weed and Kernan and Fenton, who had 
been leaders of men while he was in the nursery. How he proved himself 
a match for Charles Sumner and every other critic of Grant's administra- 
tion. How he made the policy of that administration, and rendered its 
existence tolerable in Congress. How he played with such men as Dix, 
Cornell, and Arthur. And how finally he went down before the Plumed 
Knight, as Garfield's champion, because he would not lower his lance 
when to lower it would have meant no disgrace in other men's codes of 
honor. 

These are some of the many reasons why Rosooe Conkling is generally 
and sincerely mourned. 



From the Toledo Commercial, April 19. 

There are few private citizens in this country whose death would be so 
universally lamented as that of Eoscoe Conkling. He had a strong hold 
upon the American i^eoj^le, who had learned to admire his al>ility and his 
integrity. Among American statesmen since the death of Sumner, he was 
most polished. There was never so much as the whisper of suspicion 
against his integrity during his entire official career. Although retired 
from public life for a time from a high sense of honor, all felt that he 
would be brought into public service again, and that the country would 
have the benefit of his great powers of mind and sterling integrity of 
character. His death, under the circumstances, seems a double calamity. 



From, the Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, April 19. 

RoscoE Conkling is one of the strongly marked men of this age and 
country, and still, in spite of his long and unfortunate retirement from 
official public alTairs, a factor always to be considered, a force which is 
that of a private citizen, and yet imperious — the will tluit of a man retired 
from high debates, and largely estranged from his fellow-citizens, and 
yet as haughtily inflexible as if it were that of a conqueror. Those in 
sharpest antagonism with him were keenly alive to his attractiveness — 

f 



Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 73 

his faculty for repulsion winning by the rarity of the exercise of the qual- 
ity of fine scorn, for the small acts of the commonplace seeking of popu- 
larity. There has been one great preacher in modern times of silence, and 
one great example of it in a man of deeds — Carlyle, the preacher, and 
Grant, the example — but in stern repression, in the ability to assert him-, 
self by saying nothing, under circumstances both provoking and stimu- 
lating, Conkling is the most striking figure of our times. 



From the Cincinnati Times-Star, April 19. 

His voice, in all his brilliant speeches, was always on the side of right. 
No man was more eloquent for the fourteenth amendment than was Koscoe 
Conkling. His votes in the House and in the Senate were always open to 
inspection. His record throughout was clean and honorable, as inviting 
as the pages of a bright book. He is transcendent in the list of statesmen 
from New York. Strangers have sometimes complained of his austerity, 
but it was only a disposition to know men before he took them into his 
confidence. To friends he was an Achates, to foes as relentless as the 
angel of fato. There are millions in this country to do him honor, none in 
New York to take his place. In history he will rank along with Clay and 
Webster. 



From the Columbus Dispatch, April 18. 

Conkling is dead. Whatever of animosity Eepublieans held concerning 
him, during and since the Garfield administration, disappeared long ago. 
Conkling and Blaine, while in the House, became estranged. At Chicago, 
in 1880, Conkling, as the leader of the 30G, stood up for Grant for a third term. 
In the general crash Grant, Blaine, Sherman and all other candidates 
went down. Garfield came up. Maine went Democratic at the State 
election. Conkling was quiet. So was Grant. Hancock was the Demo- 
cratic candidate. The Democrats were well organized. Their candidate 
was clean. Of all the Democrats who were generals in the war Hancock 
was the model as a soldier. He had been obedient. Not a word could be 
said against him as a soldier. Garfield's campaign finally took on a 
dangerous aspect. Conkling came out. So did Grant. Garfield was 
elected. Blaine went into the cabinet. The old personal strife between 
Conkling, as a New York Senator, and Blaine, as a cabinet officer, reap- 
peared in some of their operations with the President concerning New 
York affairs. Conkling, being high spirited, did as almost any other man 
would have done, resigned. Garfield was assassinated. Public feeling 
against Conkling ran high, because, as supposed, his agitation of the 
feeling between himself and Blaine, if not the President, caused a crank 
to shoot the latter. They are all dead, or soon will die of old age. As we 
get away from the tempestous political scenes of those days we see 
Conkling in a new light. We see him doing Just as any other man of 
10 



74 Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 

mettle, who had greatly helped to win a doubtful political campaign, would 
have done. He was a great man, in many respects. None, we believe, 
will bear him malice. His last fight with the grim monster touched all 
hearts with the feeling that makes the world akin. 



From the Cleveland Leader, April 18. 

When the official career of a popular leader ends in defeat and humilia- 
tion and he retires to private life, making no effort thenceforth to regain 
political power, only great public services and splendid abilities can keep 
him before the people or save him from practical oblivion. Eoscoe 
Conkling vacated his last public office seven years ago, and yet the 
moment that his illness became serious it was made plain that the whole 
country felt a deep interest in his struggle for life, and that he was every- 
where regarded as one of the foremost of living Americans. Indeed, 
before his health began to fail, the frequent mention of his name in lists 
of possible Presidential candidates, and the notice taken of every rumor 
concerning his plans, views and actions, afforded abundant evidence of 
his strong hold upon the public mind. Certainly it is not strange that 
such should have been the case. 

Ex-Senator Conkling was born October 30, 1829, and, therefore, was 
fifty-eight years old last autumn. Into this comparatively short lifetime, 
however, he crowded toil and learning, public services and political 
power sufficient to make a far longer career fruitful from beginning to 
end. Under the inspiration and teachings of a father who, as member of 
Congress, Judge of the United States District Court for Northern New 
York, and Minister to Mexico, had shown unusual talents, the famous 
Republican leader made rapid progress in his very boyhood. When he 
entered the law office of Spencer & Kernau, at Utica, in 18J:6, he was only 
seventeen years of age, but besides the common school and academic 
education acquired in Albany— his birthplace — and in Auburn and Geneva, 
he had already studied law three years under his father's instruction. 
Before young Conkling attained his majority he was appointed district 
attorney for Oneida county, and when, on the twenty-first anniversary of 
hib birth, he was admitted to the bar, he had a reputation which compara- 
tively few older lawyers in Utica could boast. The next ten years were 
mainly devoted to the active practice of his profession, but while the 
future Senator was making a brilliant record at the bar, and earning a 
place second to none among the successful advocates of centi'al New 
York, he was also fast developing as a local political leader. It was 
during this period that he married Julia Seymour, the sister of Horatio 
Seymour, afterwards Governor of New York and Democratic candidate 
for President. In 1858 Mr. Conkling was elected mayor of Utica, and in 
the same year he was nominated for member of Congress by the Eepubli- 
can party, and elected, taking his seat in December, 1859. 

It is here that Roscoe Conkling's national career may be said to have 
begun. In 1860 he was reelected to the thirty-seventh Congress, his 
brother, Frederick A Conkling, having been chosen in the game year to 



Memorial Tributes to Koscoe Conkling. 75 

represent a New York city district. lu 1802 Francis Kernan defeated his 
old law partner, but in 18G1 the same men were again candidates, and a 
Kepublican victory sent Eoscoe Conklino back to the National House of 
Representatives. His reputation was already well established in Washing- 
ton. He had been bold and vigorous when vacillation and weakness were 
too common. A scathing attack upon General McClellan's methods had 
created a sensation, and he had been a radical advocate of hard money 
principles In the days of desperate financial expedients. In 1866 Mr. 
CoNKLiNG was again returned to the House of Representatives, but before 
Congress met he was elected a United States Senator. Reelected in 1873 
and again in 1879, his term of service in the Senate ended only when, on 
May 14, 1881, he sent his resignation to Governor Cornell. During the 
eventful fourteen years covered by Roscoe Conkling's Senatorial career he 
was at the height of fame and prestige. Through the reconstruction 
period the eloquent New Yorker strenuously opposed the restoration of 
secession leaders to power in national affairs, and during both of General 
Grant's terms he exerted a powerful influence upon the administration's 
southern policy. He was among the foremost advocates of the civil rights 
bill, and an unwavering, consistent champion of specie resumption. 
Perliaps nothing in Senator Conkling's official career, however, better 
displayed his abilities than his eloquent and powerful support of the 
electoral commission plan of settling the Hayes-Tilden controversy 
of 1876-77. 

Meanwhile the name of Roscoe Conkling had become even more familiar 
as that of a great party leader than as a Senator. His speeches were 
famous campaign efforts, and his leadership was so skillful and strong 
that he had become the acknowledged head of the Republican party in 
New York. In the Cincinnati convention of 1876 he received nearly one 
hundred votes for President on several ballots, and his splendid fight for 
Grant in 1880 was enough in itself to make a public man famous. The 
defeat of the " 306 " left Senator Conkling still master of the situation in 
New York and a power throughout the country, but it greatly increased 
the confidence and activity of his opponents. The story of the great mis- 
take of a lifetime, which soon followed, is familiar to all. After doing 
brilliant service in the Garfield campaign, Mr. CoNKXiNGheld it to beintol- 
ei'able that his arch enemy, W. H. Robertson, should be appointed collector 
of the port of New York, and after vainly endeavoring, in company with 
Vice-President Arthur, Postmaster-General James, and his .colleague, 
Thomas C. Piatt, to secure the withdrawal of Mr. Robertson's nomination, 
he resigned and sought the vindication of a reelection, Mr. Piatt joining 
him in every step. A long, bitter contest ensued at Albany. Balloting 
began May thirty-first, and the factions of the Republican party in the 
Empire State became almost frantic before it ended. Senator Conkling 
at no time received more than one-third of the Republican votes cast, but 
it was not until July first that Mr. Piatt withdrew and July seventeenth 
that Warner Miller was elected in his place. Mr. Conkling's devoted 
adherents stood by him until July twenty-second, when Elbridge G. 
Lapham was nominated by a caucus and elected his successor. 

Thus ended the public career of one of the ablest political leaders ami 
greatest orators of his time. The ex-Senator opened a law office in New 



76 Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 

York, and began the assiduous practice of his profession. His early suc- 
cesses were surpassed in his rapidly growing and very lucrative busi- 
ness, and when he refused President Arthur's offer of a seat upon the 
bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, he certainly chose wisely 
from a pecuniaiy point of view, if from no other. Except in court the 
voice of the veteran party leader was thereafter seldom heard, and he 
seemed to court absolute retirement from politics. Nevertheless, many of 
his old admirers still clung to him, and never ceased to hope that he 
might some day reenter public life. 

Proud, ambitious and masterful, too straightforward to resort to tricliery 
and too brave to dodge, Roscoe Conkling was a man to make devoted 
friends and bitter enemies. None disputed his ability or questioned his 
integrity in both public and private life. Wherever his voice was heard 
homage was paid to his eloquence, and his most bitter enemies respected 
him as a man and admired him as a political leader of rare skill and force. 
James G. Blaine, writing calmly after he, like his strong rival now cold in 
death, had retired to private life, paid a striking tribute to Mr. Conkling 
In his "Twenty Years of Congress." In speaking of the New York dele- 
gation in the thirty-seventh Congress, he says : 

" The ablest and most brilliant man of the delegation was Roscoe Conk- 
ling. He had been elected in the preceding Congress when but twenty- 
nine years of age, and exhibited a readiness and eloquence in debate that 
at once placed him in the front rank. His command of language was 
remarkable. In affluent and exuberant diction Mr. Conkling was never 
surpassed in either branch of Congress, unless, perhaps, by Rufus Choate." 

A man of whom so much could be justly said would be missed in any 
country, and it may be many decades before another leader arises compe- 
tent to fill, in all respects, the place left vacant when Roscoe Conkling 
passed forever out of the realm of public life. 



From the Cleveland Plain Dealer, April 19. 

The Republican papers are now all singing the praises of Roscoe 
Conkling, and lamenting the loss of a great statesman with brilliant 
possibilities for himself and his party. But a few short years ago he was 
bitterly denounced by the majority of these same papers and consigned to 
a politicpjl obscurity from which, it was asserted, he could never emerge. 

The trouble with Mr. Conkling was that he cared more for principle 
than policy, and had a supreme contemi)t for the petty hj'pocrisies and 
paltry shams that had become dominant in his party. He could neither 
be coaxed nor bullied into acquiescence with the new order of things and 
let no opportunity slip of giving vent to his disgust. He was for fighting 
his political foes openly, became impatient at the mere suggestion of 
compromise and despised the dishonest tricks and shifty devices which 
other leaders in his party were always ready to adojit where thei'e was a 
promise of success. Imperious and irascible he was involved in many 
quarrels with his political associates, but it should cilways be remembered 
to his credit that in most cases his anger was roused bj' what he con- 
sidered hypocrisy and snuflling cant rather than honest conviction on the 
part of those who differed with him. 



Memokial Tkibutes to Roscoe Conkling. 77 

From the Philadelphia Inquirer, April 19. 

By the deatli of Roscoe Conkling the country has lost a man remarkable 
for many things, and perhaps for none more than for his practical demon- 
stration tliat ambition may seem to have entire possession of a man when, 
in fact, it is a merely an excrescence on an otherwise healthy moral 
nature, and may be entirely extirpated without injury to the patient. 
That Mr. Conkling was a man of genius there can be no doubt. His 
whole career and the many successes he achieved show that conclusively. 
That he was, on the whole, a good and useful citizen, and one calculated 
to adorn tlie age in whieii he lived, is conceded now, even by liis enemies. 
It is, perhaps, most strongly shown by the fact that the whole country, at 
the time of his death, was beginning to think seriously of condoning his 
one fault, serious as it was in a political view, and restoring to him the 
confidence of the nation. 

Aside from his vanity and his ambition, Mr. Conkling was a man to be 
admired and followed. He was a born leader. Always firm in his con- 
victions and resolute in obeying them, whether they took him outside his 
party lines or not, he made himself felt in whatever sphere of action he 
was placed in, and even those who contemned his views were forced to 
admire his courage. His death at an age that is early for so robust a man 
is attributable directly to the unflinciiing determination and perseverance 
that characterized him through life. It was these qualities that led him 
to take a two-mile walk in the height of the recent " blizzard " because he 
had made up his mind to go home, and had no other means of getting 
there. His State will mourn his loss. A few more years of the life he led 
since his retirement from the Senate and the whole nation would have 
joined in the lamentation. 



From the Philadelphia Times, April 19. 

The death of Eoscoe Conkling removes from American statesmanship 
and the American bar the ablest representative of both that his genera- 
tion furnished. During a service of many years in the Senate, he was 
incomparably the ablest and best equipped disputant of the body, and 
since his retirement from the Senate in 1881, he has stood in the very front 
rank of the bar, both as counselor and advocate. 

Had Mr. Conkling been as adroit in political management and as will- 
ing in political servility as he was great in every attribute of statesman- 
ship, he would have overshadowed all the many great leaders of his party ; 
but he was proud as he was great; as honest and honorable as he was 
ambitious. Blaine could vanquish him in an ad captcnulxuii conflict in the 
House, for Conkling's imperious scorn was his only answer to the reckless 
dash for the railleries made by the rival leader from Maine ; V ut Conkling 
sought no such superficial triumplis, and never respected those who w^on 
them. 

Mr. Conkling was not in any sense a popular leader. He was not 
approachable by the multitude ; he allowed the ebb and flow of popular 
waves to pass by without seeking to employ them for temporary notoriety 
or popularity ; but he was always clean in his great office ; honest in pub- 



78 Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 

lie trust; faithful to every sincere friendship, and a master when great 
public duties were to be performed. He loved those he loved ; he scorned 
those he scorned, and the world was not ignorant of Ifis judgments. 

One of Conkling's po.sitive qualities could not escape positive infirmi- 
ties, but he had no more than the share that is common to greatness. His 
sudden resignation from the Semite in 1881, because of what he regarded 
as irreconcilable differences with the President he had snatched from the 
very jaws of defeat, was the natural mistake .of keenly wounded honor 
and pride. The world paused to worship at the rising sun of pow-er, and 
speeded the parting guest as he retired to defeat at Albany ; and since 
then Conkling has practically waited for a new era in politics that could 
reinlist his matchless abilities with honest enthusiasm. He was silent in 
speech but deadly in power as he dealt the retributive blow to Blaine in 
1884, and since then he has been more respected, because more feared, 
than ever in the past. 

Had Conkling lived another decade, he doubtless would have again 
become a central figure in national politics, and an exemplar of American 
statesmanship. The general demoralization of politics has clearly taught 
that the time must soon come when such as Conkling would be recalled 
to leadership ; but to-day Conkling is shrouded for the tomb and Blaine's 
shattered physical and mental jjowers retire him from the conflict that 
both so heartily welcomed a score of years ago. Although resolutely 
separated from active politics and self-shorn of political power, Roscoe 
Conkling will be more widely missed and his death more lamented than 
if he had died in the very zenith of his greatness. He is better understood 
and better appreciated to-day than at any time in all his eminent career, 
and every section and faith of the land will mourn him as one of the grand 
pillars of the Republic that is even grandest in its fall. 



From the Harrisburgh Morning Call, April 19. 

The announcement that the great New York lawyet and statesman had 
died, though not unlooked for, was received by the whole country with 
heartfelt I'egret and sadness. He was a typical American statesman in 
every sense of the word. S])ringing from comparative obscurity, by the 
force of his great will and a natural yearning after intelligence, he, step 
by step, ascended the ladder of his profession until he reached the top- 
most round. So in his political career, spurred on by a patriotic zeal to 
serve his country, unswerving in purpose, fearless, conscientious and 
determined, he identifleil liimself with almost every great measure for his 
country's welfare, won the highest confidence of his own State, and w'as 
fairly on the way to the most exalted gift in the power of the nation to 
proffer liini. Some of the most important legislation of the century bears 
the indelil)le imprint of his intellect and wisdom. In all of his political 
and official career not even the taint of dishonesty or deception appears to 
mar the record. He was open, frank and upright to the last degree. His 
friendships were formed with a dignified caution, but when once formed 
he linked tiiem to his heart with bonds of steel. A spirit of independence, 



Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 79 

fortiluMl with a magnificent intellect, polished by severe study and care, 
and endowed with a most striking personal presence, made him prominent 
in any assemblage by which he might be surrounded. He passes to the 
silent grave, a loss to the nation, mourned by his countrymen, but not 
without having left his contribution to posterity, by his faithful, untiring 
and patriotic work as a public servant. 



From the Indianapolis Journal, April 18, 

Notwithstanding that recent bulletins have indicated Mr. Conkling's 
failing condition, the announcement of his death will cause a painful 
shock throughout the country. He was not advanced in years, only sixty, 
and was in superb health until the beginning of his short but fatal illness. 
Mr. Conklinct was one of the most conspicuous and interesting of modern 
American statesmen. He possessed both inherited and acquired ability. 
His father was eminent as a lawyer and publicist, and a brother achieved 
considerable distinction in public life. Eoscoe Conkling was the third of 
the family to serve in Congress and to win fame by the force of his strong 
personality and great intellectual powers. He was admirably adapted 
and well equipped for public life, and from his first appearance in the field 
of national politics it was easy to predict for him a brilliant career. To 
intellectual ability of the very highest order and a thorough education in 
the law, he added boundless ambition, untiring industry and that supreme 
confidence in his own powers that is a common characteristic of greatness. 
Whatever his faults may have been they were but minor flaws in a great 
character. Mr. Conkling knew he was no ordinary man. He felt that he 
had a great, healthy mind in a great, healthy body, and that his intellect- 
ual equipment was away above the average. If this made him arrogant, 
overbearing, and even vain, it was not without reason. Many smaller 
men have been even more so without a tithe of the justification that he 
had. Mr. Conkling had conspicuous faults of character, but they were 
the faults of a great man. In politics \ie Avas a partisan, and proud of it. 
With his temperament and mental constitution he could not be otherwise. 
He was a Republican in every fiber of his body, and, as long as he 
remained in public life, was easily one of the foi'emost men of the party. 
He retired from public life voluntarily, resigning a seat in the United 
States Senate because he thought he had not been fairly treated, and, per- 
haps, because he thought he could be reelected and vindicated. His mis- 
take was not so much in resigning as in seeking a reelection. The first 
was a brave and defiant act, the other was a political blunder. The result 
left him out of public life, and gave him the strongest possible reason for 
devoting his whole energy to the law. The success with which he did 
this affords striking proof of his splendid abilities. He had been out of 
the law for many yeai's, but in a short time after his return to it he had 
established a very large and lucrative practice, Avhich continued to 
increase up to the time of his death. Mr. Conkling was a great lawyer. 
President Grant would have made him chief justice, and President 
Arthur offered him an associate justiceship of the Supreme Court, but he 



80 Memoeial Tributes to Roscoe Conkling. 

declined both honors. When he did return to the legal profession he 
soon established a practice worth many times the salary of a supreme 
judge. His impetuous temper and lofty spirit made him aggressive and 
quarrelsome in politics. He was not particularly tolerant of the views of 
others, and could not brook opposition. He enjoyed quai'reling with his 
enemies, and, unfortunately, he was also apt to quarrel with his friends, 
or those who should have been his friends. But he was an open, honor- 
able enemy, a fair fighter, and never struck below the belt. Eoscoe 
Conkling was incapable of doing a mean thing. His faults, like his 
merits, were those of a great man. In his death a noble intellect is 
extinguished and a brilliant career is brought to an untimely end. 



From the Chicago Journal, April 18. 

The death of Roscoe Conkling will have less effect on the politics of the 
country than if it had occurred"when he was in public life — possibly less 
than it might have had if occurring in the future, after he should have 
returned to active public life, from which, of course, he could not have 
remained permanently absent. It was not probably his intention to take 
a busy part in this presidential campaign, unless under circumstances so 
peculiar as to be unexpected and improbg,ble. His decease will, therefore, 
not change the aspect of political affairs, unless, possibly, his enthusiastic 
and devoted friends should determine to labor with greater industry, in 
the direction that his interests and sympathies would have tended, than 
they would have done had he been alive to work out his own purposes. In 
this way, even his death may seriously affect the results of the campaign. 

Mr. Conkling's abilities were of the highest order. He was by far the 
ablest man in the Senate when he left it, and the vacancy which remained 
behind him has been inadequately filled. There was no man in public life, 
or in any of the professions, who possessed such intellectual energy, such 
magnificent eloquence and such dignity and power in debate. He was of 
the race of American giants, and, if not among the foremost, there were 
few who were his superiors in greatness. His weaknesses were those 
which ])eset only the great. In common men they would have been 
unnoticed, or would have excited no hostility. But in him they gave his 
enemies advantages which they inveterately pursued, and through which 
they finally accomplished his overthrow. That, with the possession of 
wealth, which his recent pursuits insured him had he lived, he would have 
resumed his interest in political and public affairs, and that, with chasten- 
ing experiences, the tumult of ambition and strife in his blood subdued by 
age, and with higher and better aims, he would have reentered his former 
sphere of activity and usefulness, can not be doubted. 

One fact in Mr. CoNKLixci's public life stands out conspicuously and to 
his lasting honor. He grew poor, not rich, in office. At a time of general 
demoralization produced by a great war and its results, when men of politi- 
cal prominence and influence, Congressmen and other officials became 
millionaires, or at least men of great wealth, in a few years, he lived upon 
his salary as a member of Congress, enlarged by such strictly legitimate 



Memorial Tributes to Roscoe Conkling. 81 

professional fees as his attention to every public duty entitled him to earn. 
He was not a time-server, nor a whiffler, nor corrupt. He was incased in 
honesty, and it was his bright, particular virtue. In this respect he will 
always be a model for the public men of the country, whose opportuni- 
ties may be as p-reat as their temptations, and to whom crooked courses 
may appear easier and more profitable than those which are direct, but are 
ragged and toilsome to him who travels them. 



From the Chicago Herald, April 18. 

There followed the burning of Chicago, in the eventful year of 1871, a 
display of the world's charity which made the spirits of old men younger — 
which so exalted the dignity of religion, and so proved the vitality of its 
philosophy, that unbelievers wept for joy at their own' defeat. The out- 
pouring, on the same daj', unasked, in all portions of Christendom, was a 
revelation both of the majesty of religion and the innate goodness of men. 
The charity that came to Chicago, was not the result of a play on the emo- 
tions other than that play which was effected by the picture of a city's 
destruction. The lesson endures to-day. Judges of men credit men with 
ultimate instincts of generosity that were demonstrated then, a solitary 
instance, because of a solitaiy calling forth. 

The desperate illness and sad death of Koscoe Conkling has touched 
one more quiet chord in the American character, and now there vibrates 
from Maine to Mexico, and on to the Golden Gate, not alone the chant of 
sympathy, but the hymn of triumph. The man who lies dead was a states- 
man, and yet, not a demagogue. He dealt with political politics, and was 
called a boss, yet he held honor above office, and character above politics. 
When the highway of character and politics forked, he went out into what 
he supposed would be obscurity, choosing the stony path of character, 
and leaving the Millers, Lathams and Depews to wear the bays and listen 
to the paeans of a degenerate day. Eoscoe Conkling is credited, and 
rather justly and on good testimony and evidence, with desiring rather 
to be right than to be President, and in an era, happily past, when to 
make such a choice was to disappoint every friend he had on earth. 

Of the measures which Conkling advocated the Herald has spoken with 
befitting opposition. Of the centralism which he failed to fasten on the 
country the Herald has warned all patriots. To say that his politics should 
traverse the Herald's views of right, is to say no more than may be said of 
the small men who hoped to gain his honors by sitting in the seat he had 
scorned. But his proud bearing recalled the olden days, when Clay and 
Webster and Calhoun might be vehemently wrong without the shadow of 
corruptibility lingering on their garments. To arraign Conkling as a 
third-termer, was but to make conspicuous the magnificent qualities of 
leadership which he displayed. 

That the people of America, on hearing of the dangerous illness of this 

private citizen, should, with all the spontaneity of the fire-time spring into 

warm sympathy, and that now they should regard his death as a blow to 

hopes they had not felt to exist, but did exist, is another optimistic dem- 

11 



82 Memoeial Tributes to Koscoe Conkling. 

onstration of the good potentiality that lies fathoms down in the popular 
heart. The interest shown is an undoubted tribute to incorruptibility. It 
is testimony that the people believe that Conkling, whether right or wrong, 
could not be purchased with any of the prices that usually tempt men. 



From the Chicago Tribune, April 19. 

After a long and gallant flght for his life, aided bj' a physical constitution 
of remarkable tenacity and strength, and after a struggle characterized 
by almost daily alternations from hope to despair, Koscoe Conkling has 
succumbed to the inevitable at last and passed away from his contempora- 
ries, among whom he had been a conspicuous figure both politically and 
pei'sonally for many years. 

Though Mr. Conkling had been out of politics for seven years, pursuing 
his profession as a lawyer (in which he had been eminently' successful), his 
previous connection with the Republican party had been so long, influen- 
tial and honorable that it had been difficult at any time to think of him 
except from a political point of view, and at no time during his absence 
had there been lacking the hope that he might forget old grievances and 
take the field again with all his old power and influence in New York and 
and throughout the country. If he had thoroughly retained his intellec- 
tual ability, after his ailment became dangerous, he would unquestionably 
have become convinced that while mauy Reijublicans differed with him, 
and perhaps had been grievously offended, yet admiration for what he had 
been had led them to forget all grievances and to overlook all mistakes. 
Had he recovered this might have been a powerful inducement for him to 
come into line again. But it is idle to talk of this now. His day has dark- 
ened into an eternal night, and he is now but a memory and a name. 

Mr. Conkling had been in puljlic life twenty-three years, entering it in 
1858 and leaving it in 1881. During these years not a breath of suspicion 
ever touched his honesty as a legislator, nor will it ever be doubted that 
he was loyal to his friends to the end. Until his sudden and somewhat 
dramatic departure from his party his connection with it had been both 
useful and honorable, and in the latter irdvt of his career there were few 
men who held such a conspicuous and even picturesque position in the 
leadership as he. Indeed, it is but just to say that few men could have 
gone out of the party under the same circumstances without belittling 
themselves, exposing themselves to ridicule, and sealing their political 
fcite. Mr. CoNivLiNci, however, was a man too strong ia his characteristics, 
too assertive and aggressive in his moods, and too independent in his 
manliness to suffer any deterioration from his third term leadership, his 
resignation of his 'seat in the Senate, or his repudiation by his own Legis- 
lature. He would have been welcomed back at anytime, and had he lived 
there is good reason to believe he would have come back and made ample 
amends for his error of judgment. His own strength was his greatest 
weakness. The same higli spirit, autocivmy, intolerance of dictation, per- 
sonal pride, and love of power, which urged him on, were tlie qualities 
which, when crossed and challenged, led to his defeat and to the close of 
his public career. 



Memokial Tkibutes to Roscoe Conklinct. 83 

Physically, Mr. Conkling was robust and athletic for a man of his age. 
It was his reliance upon his activity and endurance that led him to face 
the storm which superinduced his ailment, and even in his sickness he 
clieerfull}^ told his physicians they could rely upon liis vitality ; but it was 
evident ho had presumed too much upon his strength. Personally he was 
a man of the world, proud of his appearance and vain of his accomplish- 
ments, filled with vanity, domineering in disposition, and intolerant of 
opposition. Though not in the foremost rank as a great statesman, he 
was a fluent speaker and ready, quick-witted debater, and wielded a per- 
sonal influence which was strong and persuading. He was loyal to his 
friends, even in their adversity, as was shown by his attachment to General 
Grant after the latter's business misfortunes. He was strictly honest. 
Notwithstanding his long career in C(^ngress, during which he was in the 
midst of the Pacific road and Credit Mobilier scandals, no suspicion ever 
attached to his name. He passed through unscathed. 

Whatever opinions Americans may have of the course Mr. CoNKLiNa pur- 
,sued politically or the errors he made, both friend and foe will join in a 
tribute of admiration for his record of courage, of honesty, of high spirit, 
and of acquiescence in the destiny with which his great pride had much to 
do. The regretful feature of that record is that he could not have lived to 
appreciate the tender sympathy expressed for him by all classes of the 
American people, and especially by his old Kepublican friends. 



From tlie St. Louis Globe-Democrat, April 18. 

In the death of Eoscoe Conkling the country has lost a man of well 
attested superiority as a political leader and a champion of principles and 
policies that have contributed largely to the promotion of national 
prosperity and honor. It was his fortune to be directly and conspicuously 
identified with the work of legislation in a period of surpassing interest 
and importance, and he bore himself at all times bravely, confidently and 
steadfastly. He was thoroughly American, and conscientiously faithful to 
the spirit as well as the form of our institutions. In his whole public, 
career he was not once found wanting when put to the test by which the 
statesman is distinguished from the mere politician. His devotion to his 
party did not in the least compromise or diminish his personal greatness. 
There was never a moment when he was willing to play the demagogue. 
No man of his time had loftier ideas of duty or a clearer record for 
integrity. 



From the Boston Globe, April 19. 

EoscoE Conkling is dead, and the whole country will mourn the prema- 
ture termination of his brilliant and honorable life. 

It is a striking enforcement of the fleeting nature of human fame and 
distinction that nearly all the men who, twelve years ago made the Grant 
phalanx of the Eepublican party so strong in leadership that it dominated 



84 Memoeial Tributes to Eoscoe ConklinC}. 

the whole organization, should now be numbered with the silent majority. 
Mr. CoNKLiNG was the last of the leaders of that masterly and masterful 
group of men, which included Oliver Perry Morton of Indiana, John A. 
Logan of Illinois, Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, the Camerons of 
Pennsylvania, and Matthew Hale Carpenter of Wisconsin. These were 
the men who made President Grant's administration what it was, and the 
survivors of whom came very near to breaking the unwritten law of the 
presidency and giving the hero of Appomattox a third term in the White 
House. The Camerons alone of them all are still in the land of the living, 
and they have outlived their day of political leadership. All the others, 
including General Grant himself, are gone to the grave. 

Looking back to the stirring and eventful period in which the Stalwart 
Eepublicanism, that had Grant for its rallying point, was paramoimt, we 
find no nobler personality among its chieftains than tluit of Koscoe 
CoNKLiNG. He was the imperious man from the Imperial State ; proud, 
haughty and unbending. But he was as pure as he was proud, and his 
vanity was more than atoned for by his virtues. In an era abounding in 
scandals and prolific of corruption New York's undoubtedly egotistical 
Senator was free from even the suspicion of dishonesty or corrujitibility. 
He was a rank and often a ranting partisan, bitter in his sectional 
diatribes, and an unrelenting foe to the Democracy' ; but he was offensive 
in a grand way, and never stooped to do a mean or ignoble thing. 

In the Senate chamber he represented his State with a vigor and dignity 
that was worthy of her position as the first State in the Union. He was 
eloquent, and on occasions rose into those farther heights of thought, 
emotion and speech that are never reached except by parliamentary 
orators of the first rank — the Burkes, the Pitts, the Foxes, and the Glad- 
stones. He was a scholarly man, as the classical tone of many of his 
public speeches sufficiently show. He was cast in a massive mould, both 
physically and intellectually, and was a strong man in all points save 
one — his temper. He was too high-spirited and sensitive a man to 
patiently submit to many things which less squeamish politicians would 
have allowed to pass unchallenged. This, and the fact that, in a con- 
scienceless era of politics, when men in high places broke their plighted 
word of honor as lightly and as regvdarly as their daily liread, and laughed 
at solemn pledges as if they were sly jokes, RoscoeConklinu was burdened 
with a conscience, made him tlie failure that he finally was as a practical 
politician. He resented insults that coarser- fibred men would have 
pocketed ; he treated a breach of faith by a President as though it were 
really dishonorable ; he resigned from the Senate where he felt he could 
no longer sit with self respect, and was promptly trampled on by the 
hungry herd of common politicians whose only thought was to get a good 
place at the Garfield-Blaine hayrack. 

The Repiiblican party hastened to stamp all over the prostrate form of 
its fallen leader. There was, indeed, something wolf-like in the manner 
in which, as soon as he was down, they turned and rended him. They 
remembered nothing in all his long years of service to them except that 
he had displayed creditable qualms of conscience over the great electoral 
fraud of 1876-77 by which Hayes was put into Tilden's seat as President. 
Mr. CoNKLiNG was only cajoled and coerced into silence on that occasion. 



Memorial Tributes to Roscoe Conklino. 85 

It would have been better for his memory to-day if he had risen in liis 
seat in tlic Senate, as lie at one time contemplated doing, and denounced 
the electoral commission and its crime against the Constitution and the 
people. It is, at the same time, to be remembered to his lasting honor 
that, alone among the eminent men of his party, he shrunk from the con- 
summation of that great wrong and revolted at the tricks and sharp 
practice by which it was made possible. 

There was noble stuff in Roscoe Conkling. In an unclean part}^ he was 
clean. In a time when fraud sat enthroned in power he refused to 
acknowledge its authority. In an epoch notorious!}^ cori'upt, Avhen 
Rei^ublican Senators and Congressmen were making fortunes with mys- 
terious rapidity, he was stainless, and went out of public life in debt and 
embarrassment. In a garrulous age, when men with grievances are prone 
to air them with tiresome elaboration, he was reticent under his wrongs, 
and after he went back to the practice of his profession as a lawyer main- 
tained the dignity of an unbroken silence on politics. 

None the less was he a factor in the political history that was made after 
he stepped down and out. If he was silent, he had not forgotten nor for- 
given. The November night in 1884 that brought him the news of Blaine's 
defeat and the overthrow of the Republican party must have brought him 
a peculiar sense of satisfaction enjoyed by no other man in the country. 
Samson was dead under the ruins, but the party temple in which he was 
dishonored was pulled down. Revenge is not a Christian passion, and 
RoscoE Conkling was, without doubt, a resentful man. He acted on the 
maxim that "Revenge is the courage to call in one's debts of honor," 
and he called his in with but little talk, but with effective action. 

The historian who writes in the impartial by and by will credit Roscoe 
Conkling with a large share in the downfall of the Republican party. He 
will have to say that the great New Yorker was not above the human 
weakness for getting even. But when he seeks for the antecedent first 
cause he will have to say that Roscoe Conkling was more sinned against 
than sinning; that he was most treacherously and shamefully used by the 
administration he had made possible, and that if ever the appetite for 
revenge had justification it was in his ever-memorable case. From the 
cold calcium light which posterity will thi"ow upon the exiled Republican 
part}^ and its leaders, Roscoe Conkling's fame has nothing to fear. It 
will exhibit him as one of the purest, noblest and strongest men of his 
time, whose egotism and vanity were his worst blemishes, and whose 
resentments were for the most part national and just. 



From the Boston Journal, April 19. 
Mr. Conkling's death, after a painful and lingering illness, in which 
his tremenduous will power has sustained him beyond expectation, closes 
a remarkable and, indeed, an almost eccentric career. The apparent con- 
tent which he found in private life and the practice of his profession after 
his retirement from the national Senate, where he had been one of a half 
dozen leaders of a great party, is one of the most singular features of his 



86 Memoeial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 

history. It is true that his party was no longer in accord with him on some 
of the questions of the first importance, and that, perliaps, he could not 
feel as much at home there as he had been wont to be, but far from wearing 
out his life in vain regrets and chaflngs, he applied himself to securing 
triumphs at the bar with the same thorough satisfaction in his occupation, 
and impetuosity in the pursuit of it, which he manifested amid the excite- 
ment of national politics. Time has softened the resentment entertained 
toward him by men of his own and the opposing political faith whom he 
had encountered in the halls of Congress, but it would not be just to say 
that popular opinion of Mr. Conkling has altered in any marked degree. 
Those of our people who some years ago regarded him with bitterness have, 
like the statesman whose views he was accustomed to antagonize, felt their 
animosity naturally lessen with the lapse of time. To the great mass of 
our citizens, however, Mr. Conkling, as a successful lawyer in these later 
days, has been very much the same as he was in the full tide of his politi- 
cal career — able, vigorous, aggressive, and not always a safe or judicious 
leader, but a man whose strict personal integrity it was impossible to 
doubt. His especial friends have been accustomed to assert that Mr. 
Conkling never had full justice done him during his public life, but the 
estimate of his character which will be made by his countrymen now can 
be depended upon as fair and adequate. Due appreciation of his services 
to the Eepublican party, and to the republic, during a stormy period in its 
existence, can easily l)e accorded him by people among whom he long ago 
ceased to be an object of contention. 



From the Baltimore American, April 18. 

EoscoE Conkling's career was in manj^ respects a marked one. He con- 
centrated public attention upon liimself when he entered Congress in 1859. 
and his reputation grew and spread with each recurring term, imtil 1881, 
when he resigned his seat in the United States Senate, he was among the 
foremost figures in American politics. It was not alone his ability which 
made him famous, though this was conspicuous; nor his statesmanship, 
though he was generally recorded upon the right side of all measures 
favorably affecting the welfare of the countrj'. 

There were features aljout tlic man which drew to him friends and sup- 
porters with hooks of steel, just as there were traits in his character which 
instantaneously repelled and made enemies of others. He was the per- 
fection of physical manhood, Jove-like in appearance, such an one as 
would be singled out from his fellows, and upon whose face and form the 
eye loved to dwell. To those he liked, he was as gentle and as winning as 
a woman, while to his enemies — and they were not a few — he presented 
the scornful front of Coriolanus. His likes and dislikes were not confined 
to party or faction, and among his most sincere friends in the United 
States Senate and elsewhere, were many of the most ardent Democrats. 

He was a graceful orator, a finished rhetorician, and a keenly logical, 
though not always a profound, debater. In his efforts to polish off his 
sentences he at times overreached the mark, but his periods were generally 



Memobial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 87 

in good taste and to the point; and no man in the Senate during. Mr. 
Conkling's occupancy of a seat in that body, commanded stricter atten- 
tion, or was listened to with greater pleasure. It has often been cited as 
an evidence of his power that the one speech he was prevailed upon to 
make during tlie Garfleld campaign, carried New York for the Republi- 
cans. If this was true, it was due as niueli to his personal magnetism as 
his oratory. 

Mr. Conkling was a man of ixTeproachable private character. Though 
in public life for twenty-three years, he retired a poor man, with not suf- 
ficient income to maintain himself. His most conspicuous fault was an 
overweening pride, which bordered closely on vanity. This it was which 
led to his resignation in 1881, because of fancied ill-treatment by the 
administration. He fully believed that he would be triumphantly returned 
to the Senate, but he had overrated his strength and the effect of his pet- 
ulence upon his party in New York. 

Thenceforward he refused absolutely to take any part in politics, and 
applied himself with extraordinary vigor and success to the practice of 
law. His income from this source soon grew to be enormous, and with 
the moral heroism for which he was noted, he turned his attention to the 
payment of great debts which defaulting and perfidious friends had 
brought upon him. This was at once the most pathetic and most admir- 
able incident of his career, and one in which all must symi>atliize, no 
matter what their party predilections or personal prejudices. 

The terrible mental strain to which Mr. Conkling subjected himself in 
his efforts to remove these pecuniary burdens prepared his system for the 
attack immediately brought on by his exposure in the blizzard which 
recently swept over New York. His wearied brain could not resist the 
ravages of disease, and thvis another has been added to the many victims 
of overwork in this country. Mr. Conkling will stand high in the pan- 
theon of American statesmen, but his strongest admirers will prefer to 
think of him as the stanch and steadfast friend who never dishonored an 
obliffiition. 



Froin the Baltimore Sun, April 19. 

Tlie death of ex-Senator Conkling is received with profound regret 
throughout the country as that of a nuiii of great ability, whose force and 
honesty, if not wisdom, of purpose during many years of public life 
had won universal respect. There was much in his moral and intellectual 
stature to command the homage of his political followers. In character, 
he was head and shoulders above the majority of his Republican colleagues 
in Congress. His leadership was for many years an acknowledged fact of 
the political situation, and so long as the Republican party continued to be 
guided by his counsels it retained its hold upon the imagination of tiie peo- 
ple and upon the government of the country. Until the election of Garfield 
the Republican party wisel}' took its inspiration from New York and its 
candidates for the presidency from the west, where the bulk of its voting 
strength lay. After the event, in disregard of Mr. Conkling's protests, it 
entered upon the fatal policy of drawing both inspiration and candidate 



88 Memokial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 

fi'om Maine, a State far removed from the political as well as from the 
iutellectual, tinaiicial and industrial center of the Union. Lacking the 
strength of purpose to keep him to his ante-electicn obligations, 
Mr. Garfield, under the influence of Mr. Blaine's suggestions, began 
his administration with acts of hostility to Mr. Conkling, aiming 
ajjparently at the destruction of the influence of the latter in his own 
State. Thus was initiated that memorable struggle between "stalwart" 
and "half-breeds" which has had such momentous consequences 
for the Eepublican party. The administration's influence with the 
New York Legislature prevented Mr. Conkling from obtaining the 
vindication he had resigned his seat in the Senate to obtain, but the 
assassination of Garfield reversed the' situation, and placed at Mr. 
Conkling's disposal the commanding position he had formerly occupied 
at Washington. Disgusted with the conditions of public life, Mr. Conkling 
retired, however, resolutely to a private station, from which it was impos- 
sible to withdraw him, and the schism in the party was never repaired. 
Up to 1881 the party had positive and aggressive leadership on lines which 
the masses of Eepublican voters could understand and ap2>rove, but since 
Mr. Conkling's retirement it has been without guidance based on any sort 
of principle, unless the private interests of the beneficiaries of the tariff, 
the Pacific railroads and other like monopolies can be called principles. 
There has been no vivifying idea injected into its body, so that, unless 
some good physician come to its relief, its dissolution appears to be an 
event of the near future. It will be one of Mr. Conkling's titles to 
remembrance in his party hereafter that its fate might have b^en different 
had he remained in control. 



From the Washington Critic, April 18. 

In the death of Rosooe Conkling the country loses one of the most 
notable of its i)ublic men. 

As a positive element of Republican iiolitics for a long period, and a 
leader during the later years of the war, and the momentous era of recon- 
struction which followed, he became an aggressive force. Its impressions 
are visible all along the period of his legislative career, and no act of his 
life was more universally regretted than that by which he voluntarily 
separated himself from an arena in which he had proved himself so useful 
and so capable of achieving distinction. 

However the precipitateness of this action may be construed by others, 
to those who knew Mr. Conkling best, it best illustrated the decisiveness 
of his character, and the high sense of honor that governed his conduct. 

Ho chose not to be even an ostensible partner in what he then regarded 
as the impending decline and fall of the Eepublican party. 

That he was not always the wisest of political counselors may be true, 
but that he was honest as the sun and true to his faith as the magnet to 
the pole was never questioned, and although these later years he had 
given politics a peremptory and final go-by, he still cherished the hope of 
an ultimate reestablishment of the party he did so much to build up, its 



Memorial Tributes to Roscoe Conkling. 89 

disinthniUiaent from hhidenint'e which ho could never tolerate or com- 
l)roniise witli, aud a second birth worthy of the glories of its first. 
' Tliat he might have reentered the field as an active promoter of these 
results is possible, but in the meantime he was achieving triumphs at the 
bar that promised both fortune and honor above all that politics have to 
give, and it is not to be believed that he would have ever renounced such 
splendid certainties for the turmoil and confusion and glittering uncer- 
tainties of partisan contention. 

But the curtain has fallen, the story is told. We have only now to lament 
the loss of a brave man, a true friend, a constant advocate for the right. 
Nature seldom produces a more commanding figure — never one so sym- 
metrical in its attributes of fidelity to principle. 

His death will be mourned by all who admire true greatness, courage, 
truth, integrity and patriotism. He leaves behind him no peer. Those 
who enjoyed his personal friendship will mourn for one whose loyalty was 
one of the strongest elements of his character. 

His devoted wife and daughter will have the sympathy of the whole 
people in their great bereavement. 

( 



From the Washington Post, April 18. 

KoscoE Conkling possessed elements of real greatness, intellectually 
and morally, and, although he did not impress himself as strongly as 
many other statesmen on the history of time, he has left a good record — 
th^t of one who always acted up to a lofty standard of honor on all occa- 
sions, and served his country with absolute fidelity. There was no other 
public man of his generation whose character and habits were farther 
removed from the commonplace than his. To strangers, or to persons 
whom he did not like, he was proud, cold, forbidding ; to his friends, or 
those whom he desired to make his friends, he was approachable, genial, 
kindly. He was called a vain man, yet those who talked of his vanity 
could not deny that he was a giant in debate on such great occasions as 
furnish the most exacting tests of intellectual caliber. He was too proud 
to stoop to meanness or to employ any of the arts of tricksters. He won 
his triumphs honorably, and bore his defeats grandly. His conception of 
what a Senator should be was a lofty ideal, and he faithfully strove to live 
up to it. 

The most eloquent tribute that was paid to the memory of the Sage of 
Marshlleld, when his career ended, came from the lips of an aged farmer, 
who, standing by his open grave, said with tremulous voice, "Daniel 
Webster, the world will be lonely without you." The friends of Eoscoe 
Conkling must feel to-day, and for many a day to come, as that farmer 
friend of Webster felt ; for Conkling was truth itself in his friendships. 
And, while he was never unmindful of the obligations of friendship, he 
was ecpuilly careful to remember his enemies. He cherished resentments 
as proud men are apt to do. He was not such a man as wins the love of 
the masses — was not a magnetic man — but he commanded universal 
respect, and attached his friends to him with indissoluble ties. 
12 



90 Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 

It was the misfortune of Mr. Conkling to incur the hostility of Mr. 
Blaine, and it was equally the misfortune of Mr. Blaine to make an enemy 
of Mr. Conkling, when both were in the House of Eepresentatives. Their 
party and the country both suffered from the factional strife thus engen- 
dered. The lives of both these men were marred by the incidents growing 
out of that conflict. Mr. Blaine certainly would, and Mr. Conkling might 
have been President, if they had been friends. 

Since his retirement from politics Mr. Conklincj has borne himself with- 
out reproach — a unique, impressive figure. His silence has been pro- 
foundly eloquent. It was so persuasive that the vote of Mr. Blaine in 
Mr. Conkling's county fell off from the Garfield vote to a uumljer exceed- 
ing Mr. Cleveland's plurality in the entire State. 

Few men are so unlike all other men as was Roscoe Conkling. He could 
not act or talk without showing that he was strikingly peculiar. His dic- 
tion was full of quaint old words, rarely used, and he often followed Walker 
in preference to Webster or Woi'cester in his pronunciation. His superb 
physique was a fitting tenement for a strong and vigorous mind. He had 
his faults — as which of us has not — but his virtues overbalanced them 
so much that he who writes him down fairly must credit him with a good 
life. There are few of his fellow-citizens who will not sincerely deplore his 
death. 



From the Daily Tribune, Salt Lake City, April 18. 

It is finished. The struggle is over, and of the millions of Americans, 
the one foremost in many ways, is dead. Treachery did its worst upon 
him ; malice and envy and meanness fired all their poisoned shafts at him ; 
under a conspiracy of hate, malice, treachery, ingratitude, falsehood and 
fear, he was driven into political exile, and every low scoundrel in the 
land raised his cry of triumph; but even then not one dared to whisper 
that his patriotism was not as clear as a planet's light ; not one that his 
hands were not clean. They called him "a boss" because he had the 
brains to engineer a political battle in a way to win, but not one ever 
chaiged that he resorted to either unmanly or dishonorable means to 
accomplish his purposes ; not one ever claimed that he offered a foul 
blow : not one ever charged that he had resorted to the ordinary methods 
of the small politician, and all felt, even when they would not admit the 
fact, tluit what he obtained was through the sheer force of his imperial 
intellect and will, backed by a steadfast and patriotic purpose. Of course, 
he had many enemies. It could not have been otherwise. Above all 
things, he hated a fraud and a hj^pocrite. He had a ready contempt which 
found vent in invective that cut like a surgeon's scalpel, and left the 
monstrosity before him so dissected that all its moral rottenness was ever 
after visible to the world. Of course, he was charged with egotism. That 
was true, but the excuse urged in extenuation was that he had a right to be 
self-res{)ectful, for the good God gave him a masterful brain and a perfect 
physique, and he lived before men so that he could carrj' his crest high by 
day, for he took no self-reproaches with him to his couch by night. For 
twenty-five years he sat in the Congress of the ITniled States. Twenty 



Memorial Tributes to Roscoe Conkling. 91 

years of that time he was a most conspici;ous figure before the coiintry ; 
his opportunities were ample for ac(|uiring a fortune; his power was 
almost boundless ; but when he retired, retired because he felt that the 
great State and party he represented had been dishonored and betrayed, he 
went away poor in fortune, but with tlie consciousness that he had never 
broken his word, had never neglected a duty, even to the humblest man 
who had leaned upon him ; had never broken his faith nor his word, and 
that for a quarter of a century he had given his best abilities to his 
counti'y. This happens to make a record which time can not efface. 
Eather when the hounds that barked at his heels shall all have been for- 
gotten, this record will remain and take on divine tints which will encircle 
his memory with a halo that will give his statue colossal proportions in 
his niche in the ages. In the field of his triumphs there were three occa- 
sions when, it seems to us, his superiority over his fellow-men shone 
out most conspicuously. The one was after General Sherman had 
sent up his dispatch from New Orleans saying that the bogus 
Legislature convened there were banditti, and asking for orders to 
establish order. Congress for days rang with anathemas against 
the soldier, and the administration behind him. The ablest speakers 
of the opposition, one after another, vented their fury and, in more than 
one State Legislature, resolutions were carried in excitement and anger, 
condemning the general and the party in power, while the press of the 
opposition poured out its venom in a Niagara flood. At last Koscoe 
Conkling got the floor of the Senate, and talked for two hours. There 
was never after that a speech on the other side, never another hostile reso- 
lution, and the fury of the press changed to simply a sullen whine. In 
our judgment, there never was a speech delivered by any other man that 
produced an effect so convincing, all embracing and profound. It was a 
command of " about face " to the nation. His second greatest triumph, as 
we estimate it, was in the National Eepublican Convention in Chicago, in 
1880. The vast hall had been packed against him ; on arising, he was 
assailed with hisses and stamping, and for a quarter of an hour the storm 
raged like a cyclone around him. But he faced the seething mass until 
he beat them down to the point of listening, and when he seized the 
opportunity and, beginning, uttered slowdy the words : 

And when asked wh.at State he hails from, 
Onr .sole reply shall be, 
He hail.s from Appo«nattox, 
And its famous apple-tree. 

There was a hush upon the hall which revealed that a master spirit had 
taken control. In five minutes more the men, who had but just been 
stamping and cat-calling, were dancing upon the seats cheering and 
waving flags and handkerchiefs. A gentleman of this city, who was 
present, and who is an acute judge of such things, declai'es that it was the 
most magnificent triumph of an imperial intellect and imperious will that 
he ever saw, and he believes that not oftener than once in a generation is 
such a manifestation of the force of a royal mind given to the senses of 
men. His third grand triumph was when, at Grant's call, he started with 
his old chief to save the fortunes of his party. At the time the Eepublican 
cause seemed so desperate that even the sanguine, gallant and magnetic 



92 Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 

Blaine was almost in despair. Maine had given a victory to the opposi- 
tion, there was doubt, confusion and signs of demoralization all along the 
Republican ranks, and Hancock was holding the political heights, even as 
he did the key to Gettysburg]!, when Grant and CoNKUNci wakened the 
old insi)iring slogan and sounded the last tremendous charge. The face of 
the campaign was changed in an hour: in three days there Avas no longer 
any doubt about the result. Shortly after, overborne hj the machinations 
against him, Conkling went into retirement, and since has been engaged 
in building up a little fortune by his profession. He was hounded into pri- 
vate life, and the Republican party permitted it. The party has reaped its 
reward. It has not scored a national point since. Even the men who were 
noisiest in the attack on him have betrayed and deserted the party they 
affected to be so anxious to save from him and his methods. They have 
fully vindicated his estimate of them, that they were dishonest, insincere 
sneaks and frauds. Now he is dead, and the wrongs he received, and 
which millions of his countrymen hoped some time to be able to grandly 
requite, go with him to the grave. We hope that none of all the breed of 
mutineers will be given to look upon his dead face, or be permitted to join 
in the procession that will follow Inm to the sepulclier. It would disturb 
him in his narrow house. None but Stalwarts should be there. The only 
comfort left is, that when the malice, hate and hypocrisy of this generation 
shall have been forgotten, and patient history picks up the threads which 
make up the lives of the great men of this age, and weaves from them his 
record, it will be seen where Roscoe Conkling really stood. And gazing 
toward that height, the men who are to be, will say: "He was strong 
above his fellows ; he was clean and free in every detail of his high career." 



From the Daily Tribune, Salt Lake City, April 21. 

Gather near. Stalwarts ! The most august grave that ever the men of 
the Empire State hallowed for one of their own sons, is prepared and 
ready to receive its occui^ant. The April buds are bursting; the maples 
and elms arc donning their garniture of green ; the air is heavily freighted 
with the incense of spring; nature smiles — as might a loving friend while 
watching a mother lulling her tired child to sleep — as the earth opens her 
merciful breast to receive and hush in everlasting rest her tired son. On 
that soil he grew up ; on that soil he learned the first lessons of labor, of 
patriotism and truth ; on that soil he caught the first inspiration that only 
royal brains and hearts without reproach have a right to rule ; on that soil 
he won his first triumphs; when he went away it was but to advance in 
worth and to achieve high renown ; when he returned there was not a 
speck on, or dent in the shield of his perfect uprightness. It is most 
meet that his last sleep shall be where every memory of his life will be an 
inspiration forever to the children and children's children of liis old 
neighbors and friends. 

This is no day for reproaches; no day for unavailing regrets. Wlien 
under the coma wliicli preceded dissolution, his eyes no longer recognized 
the loved ones around him ; we fancy that in tiie gloom above his couch the 
shades of Grant and Logan and Lincoln and O. P. Morton, and the other 



Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 93 

mighty ones who have gone before, and who, in life, were wont to lean 
upon him when a supreme achievement of brain was needed, were waiting 
to extend to his soul a welcome so cordial that every regret and every 
reproach should be forgotten. 

How thin the ranks of the wonderful band have grown on earth ! Voice 
after voice has grown still under the tierce blasts of the years until but few 
are any more heard. It is the end of the earth, or, rather, it is the moving 
on of the endless procession of death and birth, and as, tlms far, each suc- 
ceeding generation has been equal to all the duties that have been imposed 
upon it; we may hope it will continue so. 

Still it is right to stand in the bitterness of sorrow around this grave 
to-day. To-day millions will be repeating to themselves such words as these : 
" How fares it with him? We wonder if, with quickened intelligence, in 
the cleai'er light of the Beyond, he knows how closely we held him to our 
sovds ; how loncringly we hoped that the day might come when we could 
prove how high we held him in our thoughts ; how much we honored him." 

His enemies love to repeat that in his bearing before men he was 
haughty and austere. So he was, and yet to-day, in ten thousand homes 
of the lowly and the poor in his native State, fathers and mothers, in low 
and teai'-choked voices, are telling their children that an uncrowned king 
of men is going to his rest, that the foremost man of our continent has 
ceased to live, and they will give as reasons for their estimate of him, that 
he never did a dishonest or dishonorable act; that he never broke faith 
with mortal man; that neither his patriotism nor sense of justice ever 
failed him, and tliat in intellect he was divine. 

His faults were but the infirmities of greatness. Except for them men 
would have apotheosized him, and ever after held him in thought as 
the later Greeks did Hercules. It is better as it is, for now the eager sons 
of the Republic may seek to emvilate what was divine in him. Because of 
his work a new glory was given to the system of government which in his 
land bears sway. His native land was exalted by his life ; his native State 
is made more sacred because his grave is to be there. Because he lived, 
the youth of this country have a higher incentive to struggle for honor- 
able names ; because he lived, it will be harder in future for any American 
to fail to perform his full duty. 

He often presented to his fellow-men a haughty mien, but at heart he 
was all loyalty and justice and truth, and so his fame will grow with the 
years as men more and more comprehend him. He lived a glorified life. 
He made a gallant fight and worked until the end. Even in the fever- 
visions that crept in under the shadow of approaching death, he was in 
thought holding courts and Senates under the spell of the consummate 
power of his mind and the grace and enchantment of his eloquence. The 
old conflicts seemed raging around him, and like the bold bird whose 
home is in the cliffs he was riding the blast above the ocean that was 
roaring furiously below. Haughty as he was, from childhood he believed 
there ai'c no lasting honors except such as are honestly secured ; no road 
to glory save through pitiless and unremitting toil, and so he wooed labor 
until at last it became his comforter, and he earned the rest that has come 
to him. In the halo that encii'cles and aureoles his memory, his human 
weaknesses are not seen and his lofty attributes take on sublime pro- 
portions. 



94 Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. 

A SPECIMEN OF CONKLING'S ELOQUENCE. 



From His Great Speech in New York, September 17, 1880. 

We are citizens of a Republic. We govern ourselves. Here no pomi:) of 
eager array in etaambers of royalty awaits the birth of boy or girl to wield 
an hereditary scepter whenever death or revolution pours on the oil of 
coronation. We know no scepter save a majority's constitutional will. 
To wield that scepter in equal share is the duty and the right, nay, the 
birthright of everj'^ citizen. The supreme, the final, the only peaceful 
arltiter here is the ballot-box; and in that urn should be gathered, and 
from it should be sacredly recorded the conscience, the judgment, the 
intelligence of all. The right of free self-government has been in all ages 
the bright dream of oppressed humanity — the sighed-for px'ivilege to 
which thrones, dynasties and power have so long blocked the waj'. 
France seeks it by forced marches and daring strides. Mr. Forster, Secre- 
tary for Ireland, tells the peerage of England, it must take heed, lest it fall ; 
and Westminister and England ring with dread echoes of applause. But 
in the fullness of freedom the Republic of America is alone in the earth ; 
alone in its grandeur; alone in its blessings; alone in its promises and 
possibilities, and, therefore, alone in the devotion due from its citizens. 



A NOBLE AMERICAN GENTLEMAN." 



Roscoe Conkling so Described by "P'ter O'Dactyl," Who Knew Him 

From Boyhood. 

I have seen Roscoe Conkling's rise and fall. The announcement of his 
death is a shock to me, like that of a relative, because his intense person- 
alit\' suffuses whoever lie has once spoken to. 

In Oneida county there are two court-houses and two county towns — 
Utica and Rome. I think it was the year 1840 that I saw a young man 
step off the car from Utica and ask the way to the court-ht)Use. He had 
two law-books under his arm, was apparently about twenty years of age, 
and looked like a tall, blond young lady; had on a tall silk hat, a frock 
coat with velvet collar ; his cheek was as fresh as a rose, and he had long 
red ringlets clustered about his neck. It was obviously his first journey 
to that court-hou.se. His elastic stop and buoyant face arrested my atten- 
tion. Self-consciousness, hope, ambition and confidence, and all that 
constitute the spring-time of life in the most exalted natures, pervaded 
the youth. That was an instantaneous vision that I have never forgotten. 

I think it was just two years after that I attended the celebrated trial for 
arson in Utica, where Joshua Spencer, one of our grand old-time figures, 
was counsel for the prisoners. The same blond young man, six feet tall, 
was striding in and out. A year after that, in 1852, 1 was attending the 



Memorial Tributes to Eoscoe Conkling. ' 95 

hustings at a country village in central New York, when tliere was an 
uproar at the advent of some speakers from Utica. It was the Scott-Pierce 
campaign. Joshua Spencer was there. But a perfect storm of calls for 
" Conkling ! Conkling ! " caused a young man to mount on a bench in the 
rear of the hall in response. The lights grew dim under the racket. I 
saw the same blond youth I have been speaking about. He was then 
about twenty-two years old. The ringlets had been shorn off, and he had 
a more business-like and practical aspect. I recollect he stood in a long 
grey overcoat, and with entire composure and superiority of feeling and 
mien he said he would be happy to speak to them on a future occasion. 

From that time on he was the idol of Oneida county. Everybody knows 
his brilliant official succession in the history of New York during its most 
momentous epochs. In 1855 I had a few minutes business conversation 
with him on the sidewalk in Utica. In 1850 I went after him in a buggy to 
make a speech, but had no occasion to tell him my name, I being a mere 
escort. In 1866, ten years after, I had another brief transaction with him 
in Washington, when, to my astonishment, he remembered me and 
placed me. 

In 1886, twenty years after that, I was on a railroad car in the interior of 
the State one morning. When there were only three or four persons in the 
car his eyes several times met mine, so, in deference to his manners, I 
greeted him. He placed me again away back thirty years upon all the 
occasions, but still did not know my name nor business ; and right here, 
from a whole hour's conversation with this noble American gentleman, I 
must say I found him to be a man of the kindliest instincts. Without 
unbending or lowering his great nature, I felt on terms of equality and 
ease with him, and yet gratified at his magnificent mind and honored 
with what was a true and faithful companionship. I could compare him 
only to William Pitt, and felt, for once, the insufficency of our political 
institutions for exalting into public prominence the most worthy of our 
citizens. Opportunities did not lie in the way of Roscoe Conkling com- 
mensurate with his character and gifts. There never was in this country 
a nobler Democrat, although he was called, politically, a Republican. He 
has died too soon, cut off in his prime. None who knew him will feel 
reconciled ; almost everybody who has come within the influence of his 
personality has had the instinctive hope and expectation in his behalf of 
a still greater career for him and benefit to the countiy. 



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